


Hurricane Benjamin

by deathbyhumidity



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Blood and Injury, F/M, Fluffy in parts, Hurt/Comfort, Not Quite The World As We Know It, Rey Needs A Hug, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Trapped in a Storm, Virgin Rey, ben solo redemption, no force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-06-30 15:34:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15754611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathbyhumidity/pseuds/deathbyhumidity
Summary: Four years after escaping a lifetime of neglect in the desert of Jakku, 23-year-old Rey Kenobi thought that her luck had finally turned for the better. She was surrounded with friends who showered her with love and accepted hers in return, she worked for a kind boss and his even kinder wife, and she even had her own little cottage in a tiny corner of the wooded paradise of Chandrila. She was finally home.But the heavens seemed to have a different plan, as in a single afternoon, it unleashed an unprecedented torrent of rain on her, and another monstrous storm of a kind that no meteorologist could ever have predicted.





	1. Chapter 1

*******

The prospect of rain was usually a welcome one for Rey. Even four years after having left the desert, she would sometimes find herself on the front porch of her tiny cottage in the evenings after work, reaching her hand out under the eaves and letting the cold water sluice down her fingers, each drop a tickle that brought a smile to her face. She would take in deep lungfuls of air that smelled of the earth around her dwelling, enriched by leaves fallen from the myriad trees resolving back into dirt, each whiff bursting with what she’d come to think of simply as _aliveness_ , something that was so starkly absent from her childhood.

The first time she experienced a real, proper downpour, she ran right out of the apartment she shared with her new friend Rose and barreled down two flights of stairs, right onto the small parking lot in front of the three-story brick building. As she stood perfectly still under the open sky, her face upturned and her slack mouth catching the huge drops, she could hear her roommate shrieking from their now-open living room window: _“Have you lost your fucking mind, Rey Kenobi?!”_  

Whenever she looked back on that moment, she thought that maybe she really had, just a little, because no sooner than Rose’s shrill voice snapped her out of her trance did she start running around and jumping on the puddles that were slowly growing bigger, murky mirrors over the cracked concrete, her laughter a not-so-tentative hello to this new thing that she’d fallen in love with in this place full of things to love.

But as she tucked away the key to the shutter door to Solo’s Auto Repair and Parts a full five hours earlier than the usual 7 o’clock closing after a day of barely any customers, the sight of pregnant, too-dark clouds and the biting chill of the wind made her run her hands over her arms to chase away the sudden goose bumps that erupted under her thin jacket.

When she saw the cyclone warning on TV last night as she ate her ramen and boiled eggs, they said it was expected to come in the evening, and after a conversation with her boss, Han, over the phone, they figured 2 o’clock was early enough for her to get back home safely.

“You gonna be okay, Rey?” her half-boss, half-coworker Chewie rumbled as he climbed into his truck and leaned his hairy brown head out the window. “Want me to drive you? Dunno if I like you on that clunker if it starts pouring.”

She waved away his concern and then covered the ends of her old red scooter’s handle bars with her hands and pulled her face into a mock frown. “Shh, you’ll hurt Speeder’s feelings!”

Chewie chuckled.

“No, really, it’s out of your way, Chewie. It’s just fifteen minutes. Maybe even ten if I push it.”

He sucked in his breath through his teeth and shook his head. “Road could get real slippery.”

She nodded her head in a parody of sageness. “That is what rain water does.”

She jumped to the side with a laugh as Chewie launched what she thought looked like an old potato fry at her.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”

After Chewie pulled out of the lot with a goodbye beep to her, Rey took her phone out of her battered rucksack to message Han.

_About to go home. Chewie just left too. Looks like the storm’s coming in early._

She wasn’t sure he’d read her message right away as he was on vacation with his wife Leia. They flew two days ago to celebrate Leia’s birthday with Luke, her twin brother, who lived all the way in Ahch-To on the other side of the country. Their timing couldn’t have been better: they planned to stay there a week, which was just about long enough for the weather to clear up.

Still, she waited a few moments in case he replied, and sure enough, her phone pinged shortly.

_OK kid stay safe. Leia says you can stay up at the house if you want. You still got your key?_

The Organa-Solo house, in reality, was practically a small mansion, one of quite a few in the town of Chandrila where it’s been said that money was as old as the woods. The grand white structure sat in the middle of a huge wooded property, and had been home to Han and his wife Leia for over thirty years. Rey had cobbled from the stories she heard from her friends at the Resistance—Leia’s legal assistance non-profit—as well as from Han and Leia themselves, that they used to have in-house staff back when Leia was still more active in politics, but now it was only Han and Leia up there, with housekeepers and gardeners that come in a few times a week.

Sometimes Rey wished they’d also hire a cook. Han explained to her when she first came to Chandrila that Leia was in a “cooking phase,” the products of which could be most kindly described as _interesting_ or _adventurous_. Fortunately, Han had learned over the years—“It was necessary, as you can see,”—to whip up a stir fry in no time whenever Leia’s _vision_ overtook her skills. Unfortunately, Leia’s “cooking phase” had lasted all the four years that she’d known them.

Even though Rey frequently had dinner in the spacious kitchen up at the house—rarely at the actual formal dining room, as Han told her he couldn’t stand the tinkling of the chandeliers overhead—with a revolving roster of other casual guests—between Han’s buddies and Leia’s co-workers and their employees, there was never a shortage of company—Rey couldn’t imagine actually _living_ there. Sometimes Han or Leia would call out to the other if they were in different rooms, and their voices would actually _echo_ in the huge space, which unsettled her.

Theirs was the biggest house she’d ever been in, and the first time she saw it, she could do nothing but gawk at the entrance hall bug-eyed—they had an _entrance hall_ at their house—which seemed big enough to hold Unkar’s entire house where she lived out her childhood and teens, and high enough to stack about three of them. Her mind struggled to reconcile the idea that Han, who always looked like he needed a haircut, whose jeans were perpetually spotted with grease, and whose favorite mode of transportation was a beat-up old Falcon wagon which Leia absolutely refused to step foot in these days, actually _owned_ this place with his wife.

Leia was much easier to imagine in the opulent space. Her air of class and understated grace spoke of her Alderaan high society upbringing—an Organa through and through. That was, until she opened her mouth and her natural sass spilled forth. She was a baffling combination of earnest warmth, steel core and potty humor that made everyone adore her—not the least of them Han, who called her “Your Highness” when he thought she was being particularly difficult, but whose eyes always clung to her diminutive form when he thought no one was looking.

Rey was perfectly happy in her cottage close to the edge of the Organa-Solo property, which the couple offered to her when Rose started throwing hints last year about wanting Finn to move in. Much as she loved her two best friends, she didn’t relish the idea of being under the same roof as the overly-affectionate couple. The number of times they’d been caught at the Resistance office demonstrating just how much they liked each other and weren’t afraid to make it known had a few of the other employees begging their boss to lay down the law. The physical mechanics of one particularly eyeball-melting instance which involved an old computer armchair in a cramped store room was something that Rey will never be able to understand—her virgin card ownership notwithstanding—but she figured figuring it out was way less pressing than the need to actually forget having ever seen it.

Han and Leia agreed to rent out the studio-type cottage—which maybe was too fancy a term for the original owner, Luke’s, “throw everything haphazardly together in this one room” aesthetic—to her after she shut down their insistence that she didn’t need to pay. She’d paid her half of the rent at the apartment with Rose, and she will pay for staying at the cottage—even though all three understood that it was pretty much just a nominal amount as a fragile compromise between the size of her bank account and the size of her pride—thank you very much. So that was that.

She shot Han a reply. _You know your big ol castle scares me, bossman. Send Leia and Luke my love and eat my weight in cake for me plz._

Han sent back a slightly blurred selfie where he was smiling crookedly at the camera, his face too close to it, as Leia plopped a kiss on Luke’s bearded cheek behind Han. He then followed that up with a bunch of his favorite emojis, which included a few thumbs ups, the main point of the image barrage. This emoji thing was relatively new for Han, something that “Leia’s office kids told me that’s how people text these days,” and the very idea of her gruff old boss scowling at his phone as he tried to figure out which emoji meant which still makes her chuckle.

After about five minutes on the road, the first drops of rain hit her where her open-face helmet offered no shielding, and soon her fingers were frozen on her scooter’s handle bars, and she had to squint against the wind. She regretted that she didn’t put on a proper rain slicker as it didn’t take much longer for her to be completely drenched. The chill made the drive seem interminable. She kept her mind on the hot shower that was waiting for her at home even as her teeth chattered. She only slowed down once she turned onto the small side road that branched off from the long main driveway, and soon her house was in sight.

_I’m safe. I’m home._

It was a refrain that finally meant something to her. She had been very happy in the old apartment with Rose, but there was always an underlying sense of non-permanence. Rose had shared the place with her sister Paige before the older Tico left for flight school in Coruscant City, and all around the apartment there were traces of family, from the pictures on the walls showing faces that looked too much like each other to the bright beddings and cushion covers that Rose’s mom made for them.

Her feeling of not exactly belonging wasn’t something that was always on the surface, though, and it helped immensely that Rose was the sweetest, most considerate roommate anyone could ask for. And she knew that Rose’s goodness was something that was nurtured by her parents. Sometimes when Rose’s mom called, she would demand to talk with Rey and proceed to ask her about everything from food to her period to boys, to which she would somehow manage a stammering, blushing reply. And whenever Mr. Tico sent over food he made himself, there was always a huge container that declared it was solely “For Rey.”

And just when it was getting much more comfortable for Rey to see herself as something of an extended family member of the Tico’s, Rose and Finn got together. She was ecstatic for them, especially after two years of listening to Rose pine after Finn. But the whole thing left her in an awkward position, and they all knew it. The day that Rey moved out, Finn strong-armed her into staying on the couch as Rose fed her brownies and stroked her hair and declared how much she’d miss her—never mind that they would still see each other almost every day—while he loaded her meager belongings onto Han’s Falcon. It was hilarious how the two were showing how guilty they felt through their actions, and Rey didn’t try too hard to show that it was really unnecessary since what they were doing was making them feel better about Rey moving out.

She settled into Luke’s cottage nicely in the year since. Her things found their way into the mostly empty shelves and counters in a way that stamped _mine_ on the place. If there were nights when she felt pinpricks of loneliness, she told herself it was something that wasn’t unfamiliar to her, and that it wouldn’t kill her, and that on the whole, her life these days was a veritable heaven.

The tiny car port that was added onto the main structure had incomplete walls on two of its other sides and gave her a partial reprieve from the blowing wind as she pushed her scooter under its low roof. She took her time parking, wiping the bike’s red surfaces down even as she continued to shiver, and secured a tarp over it.

She ran on tiptoes to the front door and shook out and stomped as much of the water as she could once she got under the porch’s roof. She couldn’t wait to get inside where it was warmer and where the sound of the wind hissing against the trees in temperamental outbursts would be muted. As she dug out her keys, she ran a quick mental inventory of her fridge’s contents—she was saving her canned stuff for later, if this storm took longer to die down than expected—deliberating if it was worth the effort to nuke some hotdogs to go along with her ramen, before she remembered that she had in her bag a few plump chicken sandwiches, a couple of grilled sausages, an airtight container of Maz’s special slaw and another for soup, which her other favorite tiny lady had Chewie bring over for her exactly because of the oncoming storm. The reminder of the bounty she had in her bag made her salivary glands sting in anticipation even though it was only past two in the afternoon.

As soon as she stepped into the house and closed the door—blessed warmth! blessed quiet!—she dropped her rucksack and hurriedly unbuttoned her dripping jacket before throwing it over the just-as-wet bag. She reached out in the dark for the light switch, but before her hand made contact, something shot out of the shadows and wrapped tightly around her neck.

A tidal wave of panic hit her. For an endless moment she choked on the last breath she was able to take, the faces of her friends flashing before her even as her wide-open eyes lost focus. All at once the specter of death loomed in her mind. The total paralysis at the all-consuming terror was only broken when the need to breathe became too much, and she wheezed against what felt like a steel vice but was really probably just a human arm against her throat and jaw. The hand attached to that arm wrapped around the side of her head, the fingers twisted painfully against the hair that was escaping from her squished bun. Another arm hooked her elbows together behind her back and locked them in place, making her torso arch forward in an angle that was as sharp as it was painful.

She thrashed and shook her head with all her strength against her attacker, for all the good that that did. She thought she heard a deep moan, but the person—who from how she could feel the top of her head brush uselessly against his jaw seemed like a mountain of a man—didn’t even budge.

She fell limp from the lack of oxygen. This was it for her. She was about to die. But at what felt like the very threshold of blacking out, the arm around her neck slackened a tiny bit, and she was able to take in a few weak gulps of air. Maybe her attacker didn’t want her dead after all.

For an endless moment, there was nothing but the dull thrum of the rain on the roof and the sound of their harsh gasps. Her scalp was stinging from where he was still gripping her hair, and her arms were getting painfully numb behind her. She realized that hot tears were pouring out of her eyes, and that watery snot was making it even harder for her to get her breathing back to normal. She didn’t know which one of them was shaking harder.

And then a rough voice growled against her ear in an explosion of hot breath—

_“Who the fuck sent you?”_

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! This is my first time posting here, and I'm trying not to die. This first chapter is thick with unavoidable exposition, but there will be more action and more characters in the following chapters. I am praying to the Fiction Gods that I don't overcomplicate this to the point that I lose the will to finish it. As of now, there is only a general idea in my head of where this fic is going. I will update the tags as I go along, as I don't want to put something in that I might decide later on wasn't necessary after all. 
> 
> I placed this story somewhere that is just like our world today, but the places in here do not specifically correlate to real-world ones. The reason I'm doing this is that I myself am not a native English speaker, and really, I don't get around much (lol), so I don't want to get too specific about geographic or cultural references because I don't want to mess them up. 
> 
> I should also probably make a disclaimer that I know next to nothing about some of the things I'll be writing about here, particularly those that have to do with the characters' occupations. If there are things that aren't very accurate, I hope that they don't take you away too much from the flow of the story. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this work, and I really hope you enjoyed it! If you see anything that needs to be corrected, please do let me know. 
> 
> See you again in the next chapter! :)


	2. Chapter 2

*******

Rey was no stranger to fear. Under the blistering Jakku sun, it was just another shadow that clung to her being. It was there in those early days whenever Unkar screamed at her to go to her room and not show him her useless squint-face until morning—when she had to make breakfast—after her too-small hands took too long to take apart the components salvaged from the junk that was his self-proclaimed kingdom. It followed her those nights when the moon was bright enough for her to slinker behind the strip mall downtown and dig through the rubbish bins for whatever odds and ends he’d sent her to find. It loomed over her shoulder later on whenever his “associates” dropped by and looked at her with sticky eyes.

Even then she knew she could live through those things. You didn’t die of hunger after just a day or two without food. The shopkeepers would chase her away or even throw things at her, but they didn’t bother to call the cops on her familiar face. And she knew Unkar needed her enough to discourage the worst of his friends’ attentions.

But now she was finding out that fear really was just a pale shadow against the black hole of mortal terror.

There was nothing else she could do but beg her unseen captor for her life, and so _“Pleasepleaseplease don’t kill me”_ trembled past her aching throat. Her lips were wet from the tears and the snot that had run together.

The monster behind her yanked at her hair and pulled her head back in a sudden motion that made her vision swim even more. Her shoulders ached from the additional tension against her arms locked behind her. His harsh breathing and her pitiful whimpers came together in a nightmarish chorus.

“Answer the fucking question. W _ho sent you?_ ”

She shook her head against his grip. “N-no one—no one sent me—”

“ _Liar!_ ” his voice boomed across the cottage. “Don’t you lie to me! How were you going to finish the job, huh? D’you have a gun in that bag? Plan’s not working out so well, is it? Did they tell you I’m an easy fucking target? _Huh?_ ”

His words surprised Rey. He thought _she_ was here to kill him?

“I wasn’t—I don’t know what you mean—please—”

It became clear to her that he had no intention of listening to whatever answer she could have given him. The man was literally in a spitting rage and went on.

“Did they send you alone?” She felt him freeze as though he suddenly realized something. “Is someone outside waiting for a signal?”

“Nobody—there’s no one—”

“Maybe I should just kill you first, huh? Deal with you roaches one at a time. I can kill you right now, it would be _so fucking easy!_ ”

She thought she felt him start to twist her head around. _Was he going to wring her neck?_ The thought gave her a renewed impetus, and she thrashed in his arms and shouted back, “No! No! I live here! I just live here, _please!_ ”

The last word dissolved into a loud sobbing. Her own wails were now reverberating through the house. There really was no point anymore in staying quiet.

Suddenly he began dragging her backwards, deeper into the house. That was her cue to kick at him as they moved, but she kept stumbling over her feet. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting. Her resistance to his every pull and jerk was accompanied by her shrieks, and he grunted right along with her, but her efforts didn’t seem to deter him.

They struggled past the bathroom door and into the kitchenette, where he pushed her against a counter. The hot wall of his body pressed against her from her shoulders to her calves, her legs locked in place, and she couldn’t bend her knees enough to keep kicking.

“Go ahead and scream. You know no one’s gonna hear you.”

And scream she did.

The sensation of blood rushing back to her arms made her pause, and she realized that for whatever reason, he let go of them. She didn’t waste time, and even though her muscles felt funny and tingly and not quite awake, she started pounding on his other arm that was still wrapped around her neck. When that didn’t seem to do anything, she reached back behind her head and clawed at his neck and whatever other bit of skin she could reach.

His sudden hissed _“Fucking bitch!”_ told her that she now had a slightly better fighting chance. Her nails clacked against his forehead, and she dragged them down hard against the thin skin there. He let out a cry of pain, and as she pulled her hand back, she felt something come away with her fingers.

In the next second, she was wrapping those same fingers around his arm and forcing it up against her open mouth. Her teeth sunk into thick, cloth-covered flesh, and she bit down _hard_.

She was suddenly spinning in open air. She was _free!_

But before she could launch herself at him, there was a sudden sharp pain against her right arm. Her body recognized the singular sensation of skin being sliced open by something very sharp before her brain could process the image of something shiny catching whatever little light filtered into the space.

In the next moment, the knife was right in front of her face.

_“Stop.”_

All the fight went right out of her. She slumped against the counter to her left, her hand uselessly slapped against the trickle of blood. The knife followed her down as she sunk to the floor and leaned her cheek against a wooden door.

There didn’t seem to be an end to her tears. The last time she bawled out loud like this, like a _child_ … well, she _was_ a child. When they left. Sure, after that last time, there were more tears, but they were always the kind that pressed against her thin pillow silently. Because from then on, the only person who would have heard her cry was the very same one who made sure things were worse for her if she did.

Through her sobs, she heard more than saw him drop to his knees. She could barely make out his form in the dark, let alone his face. He was nothing but a lump in front of her, a black hole that somehow seemed darker than the shadows around him, whose shoulders rose and fell with his breathing. Her kitchen knife was still shaking in his left hand, his other hand supporting the weight high up under his arm.  

“Put your hands together.” It was a command, but his voice was hoarse. Tired.

There was no arguing with a man who held a knife on you, and so she pulled her left hand away from her wound. Wetness spread between her palms as she held them loosely together.

“Hold this.”

He held something out to her with his other hand, and she closed her fingers over what felt like a long strip of cloth. The knife clattered to the floor as he wound the rest of the makeshift rope around her wrists. His knot was a bit too tight for any semblance of comfort.  What was left of the cloth went around his own wrist a few times.

“Get up.”

“Where are you taking me?”

His only response was a labored groan as to his feet he rose, _and kept rising_. Dear gods, the man was _huge_.

He tugged at the rope half-heartedly, and slowly she followed. They sidestepped the coffee table from which she also ate her meals as she sat on the floor and watched TV. She stopped in her tracks when she realized he was going in the direction of her bed.

_No._

_Eyes that followed her as she walked across the small space stuffed floor to ceiling with rusty salvage. Freckled arms covered in sweat in her tank top that suddenly felt cold from the thing that crawled up her spine. A voice that for once was a relief to hear as it cut through the thick foulness in the air._

The monster stopped when the rope tightened in his grip. He seemed to realize her horror, but said nothing and just sunk to the low bed with a heavy sigh.

_Tug._

“No more, please. Don’t hurt me like this. _Please._ ”

He bent over with another groan, tied the long tail of the cloth to the foot of the bed, straightened up again for a second. In the next, he lay back, his feet still flat on the floor. The mattress wasn’t even wide enough to accommodate the length of his torso and his head, so he shimmied into a slightly more diagonal position. More groaning, and then—

“Fuuuuuck.”

Nothing more after that. No movement, no sound. _Did he just fall asleep?_

She felt ridiculous as she stood over him in the gloom, bound to her own bed. Maybe this was her chance. Maybe she could swing her leg up high and smash his chest in—

But why in hell would he leave himself vulnerable to her like this so suddenly?

Maybe she was just as tired as him.

There was no way she was sitting on the bed with him on it, so she made herself comfortable on the floor. It wasn’t easy, with her clothes still damp from the rain and her arm hurting as it did. But at least it didn’t seem to be bleeding too much. Maybe the wound wasn’t as deep as she’d first thought. She couldn’t use her hand to apply pressure on it, bound with the other as it was—with what she now recognized as a strip hacked off from her extra bed sheet—so she just pressed against the mattress. She didn’t even know if there was any point to worrying about staining it. She still wasn’t sure she’d live through this.

In the relative quiet, she could hear the storm battering the high roof of the cottage. It wasn’t a comforting sound, quite different from the steady patter of the gentler rains she’d gotten used to since she came to Chandrila. Its irregular beat made her heart jump with it. But with the afternoon she’d just had, that wasn’t saying much.

She risked a glance at her captor, and she saw in the faint light from the window next to the bed that his eyes were closed. This was the clearest view she’d had of him so far, and it was a good thing that he couldn’t look right back.

She just hoped she’d have a chance to put this visual inventory to use.

Clad in black from head to foot. She wasn’t surprised. He looked like he could be anywhere from twenty-five to maybe forty years old. The sharp blade of his nose, his slash of a mouth and his deep-set eyes, even in rest, were scrunched together in a half-scowl. She could see now how much damage her fingernails had inflicted: all over his face, there were scratch marks, and above his right eye and on the cheek below it was a particularly deep one that was slowly seeping blood. It was a wonder she hadn’t gouged his eye out. The wound didn’t seem to bother him as much as she thought it should have. Lines of blood trickled right onto his mane, which was spread out in a thick halo that brushed the tops of his shoulders. His upper lip and his jaw were covered with the same dark hair. She had to squint her eyes to figure out that the tiny dots on his face were moles and not a trick of the light.

The rest of his long body seemed to be just as squeezed together as his face. His feet curled inwards in the way that someone his size would have gotten used to after a lifetime of sitting on chairs that were too small for his limbs. His right hand was tucked beneath the other armpit, and his left arm was twisted around it, pushing it tighter against his side, tense even in sleep. It was almost as if he was cradling himself.

As if he was hurting.  

She suddenly understood. Somewhere under his dark clothes, he was injured. Bad.

That would explain all the groaning and the grunting, and the too-slow movements at times which seemed to be more than simply from exhaustion. The shaking. Why the gash on his face didn’t merit more attention. Her sheet slashed into ribbons. He must have been in the process of bandaging himself up when she got here, and the sound of her bike must have alerted him to her arrival.

She could only speculate on the nature of his injury, but what she was sure of was that the tussle with her would have set back completely whatever healing had already started taking place.

And then a scarier thought: a person this obviously hurt still managed to almost completely suppress her attempts at resistance. If he had been completely healthy…

She was very lucky.

“Had a good look?” She jumped at his question. The guy was awake after all. His voice, when he wasn’t shouting at her, was deep and resonant.

“Sure,” she said, but she looked away even though his eyes were closed.

He was silent for a second, and then his eyelids slowly blinked open as he turned his head to look at her. His steady gaze unnerved her.

“Who are you to Luke Skywalker?”

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for staying on through Chapter 2! This chapter has quite a different flavor from the first one, but I hope you still found something to like. Things got pretty rough for Rey here, but rest assured I am a true fan of happy endings! 
> 
> I originally drafted this installment to be longer, but as I was writing I realized there was a spot for a good chapter break, so now a good chunk of the next one is already written! :D


	3. Chapter 3

*******

There were three things that helped Rey get through her long days in Jakku: one, her epiphany that the daily grind of refurbishing scavenge and learning how they worked actually brought her genuine satisfaction regardless of just why she had to do it; two, her realization that her toil under Unkar wouldn’t be endless and that her eighteenth birthday really wasn’t that far away; and three, her discovery of a particular worn-out philosophy book in the school library.

She wouldn’t have called herself a reader back then. Sure, she looked through the limited selection of elementary engineering books in the library, but a lot of them were too heavy on the math and physics, and really, she preferred working with her hands anyway. She also loved looking up car and appliance manuals on the school computer’s slow internet. But between the demands of her life back home with Unkar and the rare occasions that she could sneak out to help a classmate repair a radio or change their mom’s car’s oil to pad her hidden stash of wrinkled bills, she didn’t have a lot of free time, and especially not for something as luxe as reading for _leisure_.

It was an accident that she saw the book in the first place. As she was peering through the shelves one lunch break, researching for her Aurebesh homework, one book stood out starkly, its hardbound cover’s surface beginning to peel and curl around the edges as it lay haphazardly on top of a rigid row of gloss-laminated textbooks. Someone must have taken it from a different section and just left it there as they passed by. She pulled it out as though it called to her, and the faded cover declared that it was all about _The Jedi Code: Writings on the Philosophy of Pacifist Jedism_ , written by a certain Obi Wan Kenobi. The term sounded familiar to her, something her history teacher probably threw out in another sleep-inducing lesson about the War.

The title was undoubtedly stuffy, but the same curiosity that compelled her to pick it up also made her open the book, and on one of the fragile pages close to the beginning, the words jumped out: _“There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony.”_

And even though she had neither the time nor the inclination for poetry, the short passage _sang_ to her. She spent the rest of her lunch break poring through the book, so engrossed that she forgot all about the homework she was supposed to be finishing until the warning bell rang. Instead of checking it out, she hastily tucked the small book into the waistband of her jeans, for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of at that moment, but which she later determined to be the product of her habit of hiding away things that she treasured and her panic at the school bell ringing.

Obi Wan Kenobi’s words comforted her as a friend, taught her as a mentor and took care of her as a mother in her quiet moments before sleep those last years, and even though she remained as lonely as she ever was, the days seemed a lot more tolerable.

Years later, when she heard from Poe that Leia’s brother used to be Obi Wan Kenobi’s student, she was absolutely thrilled, even though she’d never met the man. She’d pestered Han with questions about Luke, and her boss would roll his eyes but would sometimes relent and tell her stories of Luke’s bravery in the War, peppered perhaps a bit too generously with his own exploits. And so when Rey saw Luke for the first time when he came over for Shelova Week, it was embarrassingly clear to everyone just how advanced her case of hero worship was from the stars in her eyes.

But the stars soon faded out as Luke brushed her shy worship off.

He wasn’t unkind or even cold to her, but it became obvious to Rey that this was not the man she’d built up in her mind’s eye. He wasn’t surrounded by a sense of peace as she thought he would be, but instead seemed to have a resigned tolerance to existence.

She’d resolved then to spend the rest of that holiday rearranging the circuits of her mind to fit this reality and not mourning the loss of something she’d imagined. In that time, she’d gone through her battered philosophy book again and decided that even though Luke had obviously strayed from the Jedi tenets and refused to even talk about them, the words still rang true for her. And by the end of that week, Luke had become, if not exactly her friend, at least someone she could have interesting conversations with.

And so Rey tried to school her expression into an even one following her surprise at her captor’s question. So the monster knew Luke, and probably asked because he knew that the man used to live in this cottage.

When she answered with “Nobody,” it was more or less true.

He got up on his elbow from his supine position on the bed to land his glare better at her.

She shifted from her uncomfortable perch on the floor and went on before he could press again. “I don’t really know him all that well. Han and Leia—she’s his sister—they rented this place out to me.”

His brow curled inwards even more and his gaze sharpened. She sighed and wondered why she felt compelled to tell him all this.

“He’s my boss and she’s… well, I guess she kind of is too, because I sometimes volunteer at her work thing.”

“Work thing.”

“Yeah, at the Resistance. They do social work and lega—”

He cut her off with a snort, but there was no trace of amusement at the sound. “She’s still at it, huh? Still trying to save the world.”

There was an unmistakable bitterness in the way he drawled that last bit, and she couldn’t help but snap back, “And what’s wrong with that? She’s doing good work. _Necessary_ work. There’s lots of people who could use that kind of compassion.” Heaven knew, if there had been something like the Resistance in Jakku while she lived there—

“Compassion?” His face twisted into a sneer. “You know nothing.”

It stung more than it should have, coming from this angry stranger. Just what the hell was his problem with everybody?

“And Han, you say he’s your boss? He has a receptionist these days?”

“Wait, what? So just because I’m a gi—do you even know what year it is? _You_ know nothing.” It was childish, throwing his words back at him, and they both knew it. She felt her face heat up. He just pursed his lips together.

“I’m a mechanic, if you must know,” she said after a while. She didn’t even know why she bothered setting him straight. She just narrowed her eyes at him as if to dare him to challenge what she said.

So it surprised her when he only looked at her for a long moment and murmured, “So you are. And not an assassin.”

“I think we’ve established that already.”

“Have we?”

“Look, I just explained to you about Han and—wait, who are _you_ to Luke Skywalker? And how do you know Han and Leia?”

He did that thing with his lips again. And then he flattened himself back down on the bed, looking away from her. He didn’t say anything more. But his eyes stayed open this time, staring somewhere between the sloped ceiling and nowhere.

She kept her eyes at him as she processed the afternoon in silence. She understood now that his actions towards her earlier were brought on by fear for his life. He obviously knew Luke well enough to think this place was a safe haven for him. Unless he was nothing but a dangerous paranoid psycho, he must have had a good reason to believe that she was sent to kill him. Maybe he was less a monster and more a cornered animal after all. She wanted to ask him just who or what he was running away from, but now that her terror had passed, it left in its wake the rising wave of outrage.

How _dare_ he hurt her. She’d done _nothing_ to him.

But she bit her tongue for now. Even though he’d calmed down, she still didn’t know what other things he was capable of doing. And she didn’t care to find out right now. She still hurt. Maybe it was safer that he thought she was sufficiently incapacitated for now. She satisfied herself with glaring at him, even though he was probably fully aware of it and just didn’t bother to acknowledge it. The thought pissed her off even more.

After what felt like a few aching hours of watching him, watching what she could of the rain from her misted-over windows and watching absolutely nothing—but was really probably only many minutes later, judging from how little the light had changed outside—he uncurled from her bed like an old man and looked around. He squinted his eyes and craned his head in the gloom as he stood on legs that were visibly trying not to shake, taking in the cottage, and if she were the type to roll her eyes she would have done so at the ridiculous sight.

“Why don’t you just turn the light on?”

He just looked at her, his face completely blank, and then he slowly lumbered to the front door, right arm wrapped around himself, and flipped the switch on and off a few times. He looked at her again and raised one eyebrow as if to say, “That’s why.”

“You could have just said so, you know.”

His foot came into contact with her rucksack and he looked down. Carefully he picked it up, opened it and started feeling around inside.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped at him.

He pulled her phone out, placed the bag down and leaned against the wall. “Pass code.”

“What? No!”

With an even voice that could announce stations on a train, he told her, “If you don’t tell me, I am going to open the door and throw this out in the rain.”

“The hell you will!” She shot to her feet before the rope reminded her she couldn’t really do anything from where she was.

He put his hand on the knob and twisted it.

“Fine! Fucking fine, you ass!”

He just looked at her expectantly. “Those don’t sound like numbers to me.”

She exhaled in a huff and told him.

He fiddled with her phone, and from the frequent pauses that he took and the way his eyes moved back and forth, she figured he was reading her messages.

“I already told you I’m not an… an _assassin_. Shit, it’s so _stupid_ to even think about. You don’t need to read my messages. Which, if I may remind you, are _private._ ”

“Look, I don’t really care if you’re sexting your boyfriend or what.”

 _“I don’t have a b—”_ She cut the rest of it off, but it was too late, as he looked up at her again and smirked.

Asshole.

After a while, his fingers started flying over the surface. She refrained from giving him the satisfaction of hearing her ask him who he was messaging and why.

But then he began taking her phone apart.

“What are you doing?” Panic made her voice shrill.

He opened her front door a little, looked out for a few moments and then stepped out to where she couldn’t see him. After only a few seconds, he came right back in and closed the door again behind him.

“What the fuck did you just do? _Did you actually throw my phone out?_ ”

“No. Just the battery.”

True enough, he bent over with a sharp exhale and placed what remained of her phone back inside her bag.

 _“You asshole! You… you… total twat!_ Bad enough that you hurt me, and now _this!”_ She was breathing hard, trying not to cry again. “You know what? _Fuck you!_ How will I call… What do I…”

She swallowed the rest of what she was going to say with a hitching breath.

What was the use.

She turned her back on him and buried her fresh tears in her bed.

“Look… I can’t risk you calling anyone right now. Just be glad it was only the battery.”

She didn’t even raise her head at that. She was just done.

She was cold and wet. Her arm hurt. Her hands were numb. She wished she were back at Han’s shop, getting grease on her hands, listening to Chewie’s warbly singing, or at the Resistance, where Rose would talk her ears off and Finn would call her _Toofs_. She wished she’d taken Han and Leia up on their offer to have her ride the storm out at their house. She was starting to run out of oxygen—that seemed to be a common theme today—with her nose squished against the mattress. She could hear him padding around in _her_ space. But there was nothing in the world that could make her look at the _monster_ right now.

There was a sound of tearing fabric, and she looked right up.

She ground her teeth.

He was by the kitchenette again, and she could see now that the rest of the torn up sheet was trailing on the floor from where he held a corner of it. He had his back to her, and she watched as he tore up three more strips with her knife and neatly piled them up on the counter. And then he was laying the knife down.

And then he was grunting and taking off his shirt.

She gawked as he used his right hand and arm to carefully manipulate the black thing over his head and other arm, and then she remembered herself and looked away. In that short time, she saw that there was a rough bit of whatever material wrapped around his chest, and what was probably blood stained an extra wad of cloth on his left side close to his armpit. Whatever her eyes’ sudden unsolicited opinion was on what she saw of his bare torso had absolutely no bearing on just how much she still wanted to throw a chair at him.

“Had a good look?”

_“Whatever.”_

She buried her face on the bed again for good measure. But his grunts evolved into longer moans which she found more and more difficult to ignore. The guy was obviously in pain. _Which he totally deserved._

Her brain helpfully provided her with a mental illustration of his efforts to pull his bandages off. She never heard the water running, so he probably didn’t even think of wetting the spent bandages first. With every gasp and garbled groan, she could perfectly picture cloth caked with dried blood slowly peeling off of blackened skin, peeling off _the_ blackened skin. From angry pink flesh below it. Pus leaking. Blood vessels erupting anew.

Dammit.

She snapped her head up. “Look,” she began.

His eyes were hooded in pain as he did look at her over his shoulder. His breaths escaped in uneven huffs through lips curled over teeth. He braced his trembling left arm against the door of a wall cabinet in front of him, the fingers of his right hand delicately twisted on the cloth on his side. He looked like he could faint any second.

She lifted her bound hands up. “Untie me.”

“What?” he murmured.

She sighed. “I can help you take those off.”

He shook his head. “I don’t need—”

 _“Look,”_ she said again, her voice sharpening in exasperation this time. She let out a loud exhale. “I am _not_ an assassin. I am hoping against my best judgment that _you’re_ not just some homicidal loon, and that you’ve got your reasons. Whatever. But I am deciding to trust you for now, and you better trust me too when I say you need my help.”

She glared at him through her entire delivery. When he only looked at her, she shook her hands at him.

“Can you just untie me?”

He deliberated for a few seconds. But then he dropped his arms and slowly walked back to her with the knife in his hand.

With a ragged flick of the blade, she was free.

She got on up on wobbly legs, massaging the feeling back into her wrists and hands. Standing so close to him like this just reminded her of how much bigger he was. She had to tilt her head back as for a long moment they just stood there and looked at each other. From this distance she could see just how brown his eyes were.

She realized he was swaying a little where he stood.

It was a sign of just how bad he must have been hurting when he let her take the knife from his hand with zero fuss. With two fingers gingerly placed on his right shoulder, she pushed him down. “Sit on the bed.” She imagined his sigh was one of relief as he wordlessly complied.

To the kitchenette she strode, grabbing a bowl from a cabinet and pushing it under the tap. To her relief, the water still ran hot. She jogged to the bathroom, opening her mirror cabinet and feeling around in the dark for her bottle of antiseptic. It was not a big bottle, but it was better than nothing. She went back to scoop her torn bed sheet up off the floor and draped it over her shoulder, and then picked up the strips he’d placed on the counter as well as the bowl of hot water.

When she kneeled in front of him by the bed, his eyes were already beginning to glaze over. Thankfully there was still enough light from the window, enough to finish the job without her having to dig into her precious stash of candles too early.

She sped through the procedure as quickly as she could, and she could feel his eyes on her through the whole thing. She had to run back to the kitchenette to get a pair of scissors so she could hack away delicately at the more stubborn bits of stuck cloth. Whenever he groaned, she bit her lip, trying to hold back her own, and hoped that her scissors weren’t cutting too much through his already tortured skin. She felt the odd urge to smooth her hand over his fingers twisted around the sheet on her bed in a death grip.

She desperately tried not to process the sensation of her palms sliding over his skin as she lifted his arms this way and that to move them out of the way of the bandages, or the way that he smelled as she worked around him.

It was all too easy to forget that barely an hour ago, this guy was trying to choke the life out of her.

But that was then and this was now, and she wanted to just empty her mind as she pulled his shoes off after putting his huge feet up, settling him fully on _her_ bed after the bandage was replaced. She even pulled her blanket over his naked torso, and for a second she wondered if she did it for his comfort or for her own peace of mind. His breathing was starting to even out as he lay with his eyes closed, and that was a good thing, and she told herself that that was all that’s important.

She plopped down on the floor next to the bed as she caught her own breath. He’d stayed quiet through the whole process, not even cursing out, but she thought she heard him mumble something just now.

“What was that?” she asked, cocking her head toward him.

“Your name. What’s your name?”

His half-open eyes were on her again. He was looking at her like her answer was absolutely necessary before he can settle down into rest peacefully.

“My name is Rey.”

“Rey.” As if he was testing it against his tongue. His voice was the softest she’d heard it. “You need to clean that cut on your arm too.”

She’d completely forgotten about her own injury. She hadn’t felt it stinging again until he’d reminded her of it.

But before he could fall asleep, she wanted to know too.

“And what’s yours?”

He didn’t stir. His breaths were perfectly even. His eyes didn’t even flutter.

But then—

“Forget it.”

"That's hardly fair." She sighed. “It was _not_ nice meeting you, Forgeddit.”

He let out a soft snort. But he didn’t answer her question.

And so she got up and left him to fall asleep or do whatever he wanted.

She needed to light a fire for both the light and the warmth, because at the rate her luck was going, the power probably wouldn’t come back on till the storm blew over and the repair crews could get to whatever needed fixing. Thankfully, there was a stack of wood left over from last winter in the car port, and she hoped it had stayed dry. She wished she’d thought to do this yesterday, or even this morning.

She grabbed a big plastic bag and quickly ran outside while there was still light, the sounds of the cyclone suddenly crashing over her again along with the water and the wind. From a crate in a corner of the car port, she plucked a few pieces of wood and dumped them into her plastic bag. Back into the house she ran, drenched once again from just the short sprint. It didn’t take too long to get the fire going, and for a few minutes, she just kneeled by the small stone fireplace, relishing the heat against her freshly chilled skin, as well as the light that danced around her.

After a quick glance at her house guest, who lay absolutely still on the bed, she pulled an old shirt and a pair of drawstring pants from her wardrobe, and then ran to the bathroom to finally take the shower she’d been looking forward to, leaving the door open so some light could trickle in. The water was as blessedly hot as she’d been imagining the last few hours.  

She was placing the finishing touches on her paper-towel-and-masking-tape bandage—the band-aids she found in a drawer were uselessly tiny—on her arm when she heard Forgeddit moaning again. She went over to the bed, where the sound persisted. His face was covered with a sheen of sweat, and his lips were cracked and red, as if he’d been biting them all this time. The blanket moved around as he rubbed his foot restlessly over the surface of the bed.

“Hey.” She almost laid a hand on his shoulder but thought better of it. “You okay?”

His eyes slid open in the firelight and spoke wet volumes before he actually did. “It fucking hurts.”

The plaintiveness in his voice clawed at her heart. She didn’t know what to think or feel anymore. Here was this black hole/monster/cornered animal/asshole lying on her bed after she’d patched him up, after he’d hurt her, and he was begging her with his eyes and his trembling lips to ease his pain. She wanted to throw him out in the rain like he’d done to her phone battery. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to take the softest corner of her shirt and dab at the tears in his eyes.

“Wait here.”

She realized how stupid that was only when she opened yet another cabinet and took a glass bottle out. It wasn’t like the guy was capable of going anywhere right now.

With one hand holding onto a glass a quarter full of clear liquid, she braced herself mentally before sliding her other arm around his neck. His eyes shot open, and she simply pulled him up to a sitting position—with great effort—and told him “You need to drink this” as she held the glass to his lips.

He exploded into a fit of coughing after a few gulps. “This isn’t water!”

“I never said it was. I couldn’t find any ibuprofen. This should at least take your mind off the pain. Help you sleep.”

He blinked at her balefully, so close to her face as she supported his bare shoulders—such hot skin—with her arm. But then he moved forward to drink the rest of the liquid she held up.

She sent Rose a silent prayer of thanks for the vodka she insisted Rey keep “for contingency purposes.” But she never would have imagined this was the kind of circumstance Rose wanted to prepare her for.

“What flavor piss is this even?” her patient asked. The grimace on his face was one of disgust and not of pain, and she counted that as a small victory.

“Strawberry-lemon vodka.”

“Fuck. Pour me some more.”

So she did, and after another quarter glass and a long groan, he was on his back again. The vodka worked its magic quickly, and soon enough, he was asleep.

She was inhaling her second chicken sandwich from Maz’s bounty by the fire after night had fallen, listening to the tempest on the roof and wondering whether she should have fed her guest some of the soup first before dousing him with alcohol, when she heard him moaning again.

He suddenly started thrashing on the bed, and she padded over quickly.

“Hey. Hey, what is it?” She tapped his arm frantically. “Are you awake?”

His eyes suddenly shot open, wide and fearful. She thought she heard him mumble, “… kill me…”

“What?”

“Unghh… going to kill me. I don’t wanna die.”

It looked like he was in a delirium induced by either the pain or the alcohol—or maybe even both. She tried her best to keep the panic out of her voice as she rubbed her palm quickly over his arm soothingly. “No, no… no one’s going to kill you. You’re okay.”

“Nnreyyy…”

“Shh, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Where he found the strength, she would never know, but he suddenly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close, close enough that their noses almost touched and his vodka-tinged breath brushed her mouth when he whispered, “Please... please don't... don’t tell Han.”

Did he say Han—? “What was that? Don’t tell Han what?”

“Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him I’m gonna die.” He was weepy now.

“Okay, I won’t tell Han. I promise I won’t. Shh.”

But his hold on her shoulder refused to loosen, and so she laid her head on his uninjured side, hoping the pressure and warmth on his chest would leach into his subconscious and translate into comfort.

He continued muttering incoherently and sobbing, and under her cheek she could feel his tortured breaths wheezing in and out of his lungs. She could do nothing but make soft crooning noises and try not to cry herself.

“Don’t tell Dad. Don’t tell Dad.”

And suddenly she understood.

“He won’t help. Useless son of a bitch.”

This man was Han and Leia’s son.

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes on world building. There are references here of a War, and of "Jedi philosophy." These are both pretty much the same ideas as those from canon, just modified to suit a non-fantasy setting. There was a War, which might or might not be further built upon here, which involved some characters both active and in the background of the story. The thing won't have significant bearing on the plot. And the Jedi philosophy is simply one that embraces peace and letting go of strong passions. Shelova Week is something that I lifted straight out of Wookieepedia when I was looking for holidays that could be something similar to Christmas or Thanksgiving or what. And I decided that instead of English, they are speaking Aurebesh--which in canon is not a language but an alphabet, but let's not split hairs for now. :D 
> 
> Also: I am planning for there to be smut in this story, so just a fair warning that things will get graphic in a different way somewhere. I am now updating the tags to include this eventuality. 
> 
> Again, thank you so much for reading, and all I am hoping for is that you enjoyed it. :)


	4. Chapter 4

*******

 

There was only a single time that Rey ever saw Leia break, and the sight of the steely-spined woman literally shaking in tears was something that Rey will never forget.

It was a November evening last year. The sun was kissing the tree line good night, its orange and purple blanket catching on the black fingers reluctantly waving back with the soft wind. They were in the process of shedding their leaves for the oncoming winter, and their faint perfume teased the cool air.

Rey would sometimes take long walks after work, just taking the colors of the changing seasons in after a day of inhaling car exhaust and spent grease. It was yet another thing that she never knew she missed when she came to Chandrila. She would find her way close to the main house, where she would visit with whatever flowers remained in Leia’s garden, and sometimes Han or Leia would sit with her on a stone bench and chat.

She was grateful that the lengthening shadows hid her when she came upon them that night, and that they never saw her coming.

Han’s arms around Leia made it clear to Rey right away how private the moment was, and for a second she thought it had been an uncharacteristically sweet embrace she could tease Han about the next day. She was about to turn back, but then she heard the woman’s sobs, and she froze in her tracks.

She’d seen Leia shed tears before, in compassion for the men and women who came to the Resistance with visible bruises on their skins and invisible scars on their souls, and in celebration for any joyous news of pregnancy or marriage her co-workers came to her with. The woman’s empathy was fathomless, and people gravitated to her for it.

But those tears were never desperate, and never for herself. So when Rey saw them, her hitching wails clawed deeply at Rey’s soul.

Han’s voice was just as desperate—almost angry—even as he held his wife’s small body against his chest and spoke against her hair. _“It’s been fifteen years, Leia. Benjamin made his decision. Stars know I love that boy, but we’ve done… we’ve done all we could.”_

The sight of Han and Leia arguing wasn’t new to Rey, but it had always been about something silly, like Han leaving ahead of Leia when she took too long saying goodbye to someone at the office, or when Leia needled him about his consumption of charred meat courtesy of barbecue nights with Chewie at the helm. It now occurred to Rey that for how the couple was so open to their friends, they had been zealously careful to keep certain things completely out of the public eye.

_“Did we? Did we really, Han? Then why… why is he out there working for that… that demon? He’s… thirty-two today… why hasn’t he called even… even once?”_

Rey’s ears burned. She had no idea who this Benjamin was, but what was clear was that she had to leave as quickly and as quietly as possible, and so to the fading sounds of Han’s curses and pained reassurances, she slinkered off.

She debated whether she should bring it up with Poe as they had coffee at the office a few days later. She was aware that Poe’s family had been close with Leia’s forever, both as political allies and as friends, and that he most likely knew what that was about. She finally decided it wasn’t gossip as she was truly concerned for their boss.

The easy smile that made her friend’s face a beacon for every female aged eight to eighty—and a considerable number of males—melted right off at her hesitant question. Poe assessed her wordlessly for a long moment before sighing and launching into his tale grimly.

She was shocked to discover that Han and Leia had a son, a son who had been best friends with Poe and had gone to school with him. They were inseparable as children, but “Ben,” as Poe called him, was a quiet kid who always hated that his parents were so famous—the Senator’s daughter and the war hero. Poe proceeded to tell her that he and Ben fell apart when they got to high school, and that Ben got into trouble more and more for fighting. Han and Leia moved him to a different school before he could officially be expelled, but he fled town after some major trouble that Poe refused to discuss. And he’d never gone back.

Poe had taken Rey’s arm gently, and he looked so much older after telling Rey his story. He said he only told her because he was sure he could trust her love for Han and Leia, and that he wanted to make sure she would never ask anyone else about it. Then he made her swear not to breathe a word of it to anyone, not even to Finn or Rose.

And so she swore. She buried the information in the back of her mind, where her curiosity wouldn’t be able to try to draw it out, and filled the forefront with work and friends.

_Benjamin. Ben._

She should have guessed the identity of her guest sooner. It was clear to her now as she looked at his face in the firelight—sleeping, once again—as his scowl was Han’s scowl, even the way he chomped on his lips. His brown eyes were the very same ones on Leia’s face, and there had been moments when she could swear she saw that same sharp _something_ that was almost humor as on Leia’s break through the coldness.

She wondered for a second, as she looked at the rest of him—his feet hanging off the end of the damn bed—how such a giant of a man could have come out of Leia.

And his own snide comments earlier only bolstered Poe’s account of his tumultuous relationship with his parents. Just what had gone wrong?

There was a strong disconnect between what she knew of Han and Leia and the rage that had poured out of this man earlier. Their _son_.

But why was he here now after staying away for so long?

The same unanswerable questions raced around her mind over and over again and chased her awareness into black exhaustion.

*******

It was to pain shooting up and down Rey’s spine and neck that she came to. She’d fallen asleep sitting up with her cheek against the edge of her mattress. Slowly the day came back to her, and her eyes shot open, zeroing in on the man not two feet from her face. His soft snores could barely be heard over the rain.

She stretched upright with a groan, massaging the crick out of her neck, and peered at the clock above the bathroom door which was barely illuminated by the dying fire. A little past ten. She was surprised she’d been out for almost three hours. When she walked over to the light switch and flicked it, it stayed off.

It had been hours since the power went out, and she was thankful that she only had some hotdogs and a bit of ground pork in her tiny refrigerator freezer. Food waste was something that never sat well with her, but at least it wouldn’t be much, and maybe whatever cold that remained in the freezer would be enough to make the food last until tomorrow, when she hoped the power might be restored.

Thinking of food once again brought her mind back to her guest. The guy hadn’t had anything to eat since their… _encounter_ , and she was sure that in his state of mind earlier, food had been the last thing he would have spared a thought to. She wondered just how long it had been since he last ate, and for a man his size, he probably didn’t normally go without sustenance for more than a few hours at a time.

She grimaced when she remembered making him drink vodka. On an _empty stomach_. His gut was probably burning right now from the alcohol. She didn’t even think to make him drink water before or after the vodka.

She realized she had no choice but to sacrifice her saucepan to the freshly-fed wood fire to heat up Maz’s soup—her stove was electric. It annoyed her greatly as she held the pan as close to the flames as she could without burning her hand or her cheery yellow pot holder, which was wrapped around the very end of the handle.

Once she’d dumped some of the soup into her cereal bowl and placed it on her coffee/dining table next to a glass of water, she kneeled once again by her bed, took a fortifying breath and then tapped her guest’s arm.

“Hey. Wake up. Hey, you need to eat.”

The man’s soft snoring was cut off by a sleepy snuffle, but he didn’t open his eyes.

“Wake up. _Ben_.”

Calling his name was very effective. His face, sleep-soft just a second ago, transformed instantly into the now-familiar thundercloud as he shot his gaze at her.

 _“What did you call me?”_ His growl was hoarse from sleep.

That confused her for a second. Wasn’t that his name? But she forced her features into blandness. Drama was not a priority right now.

“You need to eat. It’s late.”

She ignored his glare—and tried even harder to ignore how the firelight licked at his pale chest—as she picked the bowl up, blew on a spoonful of soup and brought it to his mouth. Her surly guest did not appreciate that at all as he bit out, “I can feed myself, I’m not a fucking child,” after which he commandeered the spoon with his right hand. And then promptly launched into a litany of curses as he drenched himself with the hot soup.

There was a mad scramble, and Rey found herself dabbing at his skin with her blanket. His sudden grip on her wrist ended her frantic motions, and she could feel her eyes becoming round when she realized just how closely he held her. His breath washed over her face as he spoke through gritted teeth.

“I’ll do that.”

She shook herself free as he wiped himself off. She kept her gaze away from his even as she placed the cereal bowl—as warm as her cheeks felt—on his hands, and as she sat on the floor, facing away from him, her back against the bed. Her fingernails drew patterns on her upturned knees.

It felt like some kind of dream as she listened to him sip his soup. Here she was in the middle of the night, in her sleep clothes in the firelight, with another person in her space. It was just terribly unfamiliar, and yet so strangely intimate and… _domestic_ , and the whole thing was doing things to her insides. She had the sudden impulse to talk, and keep talking.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You’re… you’re Han and Leia’s son, aren’t you?”

He choked on his soup and hissed at her, “We are _not_ talking about Han and Leia.”

The prompt dismissal stung, and she looked away. So maybe she shouldn’t have opened up with that, but he didn’t have to be so rough about it.

She knew just what this hurt was. It was her constant nightly companion given hope, and then beaten down right away. She could feel her lips trembling, the saliva gathering thickly at her throat. What was she thinking, hoping for conversational scraps from her reluctant guest?

But then after a few more very audible sips, he asked, “Do you want some of this?”

She didn’t trust her voice, so she only shook her head, her eyes trained on her fingers.

He followed that up—even softer this time—with, “Have you eaten?”

She nodded.

She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, but many minutes after the eating noises stopped, he said, “How’d you even get to be Han’s mechanic? You’re not from here, are you?”

Her talkative mood had completely passed. But she unhinged her tight jaw after a moment. “Niima. Jakku. Poe and Finn’s car broke down. They were there for some kind of meeting with San Tek—with a local community leader. Fixed it, then drove with them here.”

“Poe? Poe... Dameron?”

“Mm.”

“Charmed you right into leaving, huh?”

She shrugged. “He is a charming man.”

“Always got what he wanted, that one.” Again with the ill-concealed bitterness. And that totally unnecessary insinuation.

In fact, the man had tried flirting with her once. But she had neither been ready for nor interested in that kind of connection, and Poe picked up on her indifference pretty quickly and modified his overtures into something more platonic. Which Rey responded to very well. She knew her friend was prone to laying it on thick, but he was genuine under all the charisma.

And so she shot back, “Did he steal your girl away before?”

She was a hundred percent sure, even without seeing his face, that he did that lip thing before he replied with, “Not really.”

“Poe told me you were friends a long time ago. He works for your mom now, you know.”

He snorted. “No surprises there. Leia always loved him.”

At this, she finally looked at him. So maybe it wasn’t a girl that Poe “stole” from him.

She remembered Leia’s tears that beautiful autumn evening.

Softer this time, she said around the lump on her throat, “Leia loves you too, you know. Han too.”

He looked straight at her with his Leia eyes swimming in… something. Anger. Anguish. “Don’t presume you know everything.”

Her earlier hurt had numbed her somewhat, so his words landed easier on her this time. A tiny bit.

He cleared his throat and tried again after a while. “So… Jakku. That’s a long way from here.”

“Just how I like it.”

“You running away from something?”

She smiled humorlessly at that. “Can you run away from nothing? I think that’s what I did.”

She could feel his eyes on her. “Didn’t leave any family there, I guess?”

Unkar had been “Uncle Unkar” to her around other people. All her school documents said so as well. She didn’t know how he got them to accept the forgeries, but the man was smart enough to figure out that it was a necessary lie so she could go to school, so he couldn’t be hounded by child protection services.

No, he wasn’t blood. But it took her many years to accept that even so, he did her one better than those who actually were. He kept her fed and clothed—if barely. Her life with him was nothing but work, but at least it had helped her develop the skills she was now making a happy living with. He’d even given her his last name, which was more than she could say for the man and woman who left her with him.

And when she left with Finn and Poe four years ago, it was with the knowledge that she was leaving the only person to whom her existence had ever mattered at that point. She only hoped that the paper bills—exactly half of her very meager savings—she’d wrapped with a tear-stained note and left on his table beside the very last dinner she would ever make him would let him know that she had been grateful, in her own way.

She rose to her feet and took the bowl and spoon from Ben’s hands.

“You got that backwards. They were the ones who left me.”

No more words followed her as she walked to the sink to wash the dinner things.

But she did hear him rustling the covers on the bed as she put away her blackened saucepan. She looked at him over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised in a wordless question. She hated that she kept defaulting to how-can-I-help-you behavior with the guy, but she couldn’t help it.

“I need to use the bathroom,” he mumbled as he got to his feet.

She was absolutely not going to leave the bathroom door open for him for the light as she did earlier when she took her shower, so she pulled a candle out of one of the counter drawers, ran to the fire to light it and then quickly settled herself under his right arm, her free hand grabbing his waist.

_Empty mind. Skin is rock. Sensation is an illusion._

“I don’t—I wasn’t asking—” he stammered, but she just applied pressure on his side so he’d shuffle forward already. And hopefully not look at her face. Which the _candle light_ was making hot.

She placed the candle on the pedestal sink in her cramped bathroom after maneuvering them both through the door. It was only after a few seconds of silence as they stood in front of the porcelain bowl that she looked up at his face.

“You gonna hold my dick out for me too?” he asked in a perfectly flat voice.

Apparently, the fucking _candle light_ had fried her brain circuits as well. She ducked under his arm and out the door, slamming it maybe a little too loudly behind her.

She hit her forehead against the wall a few times before walking away.

She was sitting in front of the fire with her back to the bathroom door—there was no way to pretend nonchalance—when he exited.

“I… used your toothpaste,” he told the back of her head. She was _not_ going to ask about toothbrushes, and she assumed from his statement that he didn’t touch hers, so she only nodded. And she wasn’t about to help him across the room again. If her actions seemed wildly inconsistent, then… that was that.

But he did have to move back into her line of sight to stand next to the bed. She could sense his hesitation before he spoke again.

“I guess… I guess I’ll sleep on the floor and you can take the bed this time.”

“Oh, no!” The words exploded out of her, and her hands gestured wildly. “No, no! Just… go back to sleep. On the bed. You can have the bed. I can sleep on the floor. I like sleeping on the floor. It’s very nice in front of the fire. Very warm. You need to… rest up. For your thing—your wound… to knit. Yeah.” The barrage of words was delivered to a spot a few inches to the left of his face.

He stood awkwardly for another interminable moment before making the wise decision that it would better kill their mutual misery if he didn’t argue. And when he threw her single pillow at her—or at least, onto the coffee table’s edge from where it slid right off—after he laid back down, she didn’t argue either.

There was no need to say good night. It would have been a lie anyway. The night had been so painfully far from good.

It was almost midnight, and she was so wretchedly tired. When she was sure Ben had fallen asleep again, she walked to the old armoire close to the foot of the bed and grabbed a blanket for herself. Her foot sent something sliding a short distance across the floor, and she looked down to see what it was.

A _wallet_.

She peeked to make sure her guest hadn’t stirred, and then brought the wallet over to the fire. The black leather was tooled with a geometric pattern and looked expensive, if worn. She buried her compunctions about going through this very personal thing— _he fucking read her phone messages earlier_ —and unfolded the weighty leather. She barely looked at the bills—though she noted with annoyance that there was maybe too many of them to be carried around safely—and dove straight for the plastic.

To her total confusion, all the cards said they belonged to a _Kylo Ren_. Even his driver’s license said so. But it was clearly Ben’s face that stared back at her. And even though he made it clear earlier that he didn’t want to talk about Han and Leia, he didn’t really bother denying that they were his parents. What the hell was this about?

And his birthday, according to the card, was on November. _November_. Ten years before her own.

In another compartment, something shiny caught the light. She dragged it out and narrowed her eyes to read what the package said. And then stuffed the thing right back in before dropping the wallet and kicking it beneath the coffee table.

When she curled up by the fire and pulled the blanket over her head, she told herself it was just a bit of rubber that was really none of her business. As none of her business as anything could ever be.

Her pillow already smelled like him, dammit.

Her mind gratefully latched onto the thought of needing to establish communication with her friends ASAP. They were probably worrying about her already since she hadn’t replied to any texts she was sure to have gotten. There was no way her phone battery survived that dunking.

She knew Han didn’t have a landline at the house anymore, but she wondered if she could use the computer in the downstairs study to send an email. Maybe she could take her bike there in the morning if the storm let up a little. She didn’t want to think of what Ben would say to that.

She was drifting off to sleep already when he started moaning again. With her eyes barely open and her head thick with the sludge of sleep, she crawled next to the bed yet again. Her hand automatically began to rub his shoulder—thankfully with the blanket over it this time—and his moans slowly quieted down.

When next she came to, she was pressed against a slab of heat. Which felt very nice. Which was very subtly moving against her in a slow, comforting rhythm.

Which her slowly-awakening mind all at once screamed at her was _Ben_.

She stayed perfectly still as she tried to understand just how she’d wrapped herself around him. When she opened her eyes, the morning light, even in the rain, was already spilling in faintly through her eyelids, and it illuminated the hazy expanse of white skin not even an inch in front of her. He was flat on his back. Her nose was squashed against his upper right arm, and her own was curled over his and flush against his torso, her knuckles pressed against her lips. The back of his hand lay on her hip as her leg draped over his. And her thigh was pressed against… _that_.

 _It_ was awake. Really, fully, unmistakably awake. But he wasn’t. He _had_ to not be.

She’d never, ever been this physically close to anyone in her life, and her body couldn’t deal with it. His muscles and his skin were a texture she’d never felt before, not all this much, not all at once. Heat bounced between their surfaces, and she felt hot and cold at the same time. Her heart was hammering, and every single hitching breath she took brought his scent _in_. She was trembling, and each tremor electrified every single point of contact.

She was desperate to move away. She absolutely didn’t want to move away. She was hyper aware of that _thing_ against her thigh, and the corresponding area on her body was awakening in kind. Sensation was shooting up and down the nerves between her legs and into her abdomen, making her muscles twitch. Her body was stretching itself in ways it had never stretched before—not this much, not this fast, and it hurt. She needed to rub against him.

She was _fucking sick_. She was _going to be sick_.

She extricated herself from him as carefully as her shaking body allowed, and he _fucking nuzzled closer to her_ as she retreated, his fingers grabbing at the space she’d vacated, but thankfully he didn’t wake up.

She stumbled into the dark bathroom, where she tore at her pants and underwear and dropped her ass onto the lid of the toilet. Her toes curled against the cold porcelain base as she spread her knees open, heedless of the burn of her protesting thighs. Her head banged against the wall behind her as her back arched, but none of it registered as pain, not when her hand was so desperately rubbing against her clit. Her anger spiked at being too wet that it made her fingers too slippery for the pressure that she needed.

Ben’s scent was in her nose and in her lungs, and his irises were brown and his lips were red and his skin so pale and dotted in front of her closed eyes, and his breath was hot on her face, and his nipples stiff and right there for her to latch her lips and teeth onto, and she wanted him all around her and inside her, and she needed his hard weight on her and his damp skin rubbing against her and his thick cock in her, just cleaving her open with every push and stroke, and she didn’t know how she knew it all, but there was no use denying the truth now, not when her pussy was singing its wet gospel, but she was clenching around her fingers now and it wasn’t enough, _it wasn’t Ben,_ but it felt so fucking good all the same—

When she came, it felt like a curse.

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. That happened. 
> 
> I hope you guys stay on through this new change. Thank you again for reading. :)


	5. Chapter 5

*******

 

It was a good thing, Rey thought, that she couldn’t see her face clearly in the mirror in the dim bathroom. She wasn’t sure she could look herself in the eye right then. The water dripping off of her cheeks was almost shockingly cold, which was just how she needed it. Still, it wasn’t enough to wash away the feeling of shame that lay thick on her skin.

She told herself that she was in a much better head space now than all those years ago when her adolescent subconscious had made her believe that her classmates and neighbors were right. She knew now that she wasn’t trash. She knew now that she had never been in danger of “living like a slut and dying like a slut,” as Unkar had described her mother those rare times that he talked about her parents. She knew now that her undernourished body back then was more than just the favored target of all those demeaning comments that so easily slipped from hormonal teenagers’ judgmental mouths.

It didn’t take any effort to _know_ all this, but it was hard to forget the hurt, and to let go of the shell she’d wrapped around herself. But it was becoming easier.

She no longer flinched when Finn or Poe gave her friendly hugs. Most of the time these days, she even hugged back. She loved it when Leia squeezed her arms and laid her grey head on her shoulder. Rose’s gentle hands on her hair soothed her soul.

And she figured that in time, she will stop freezing whenever she was subjected to romantic or sexual attention. It didn’t all have to happen at once. She knew she still had to work on it, but there was no hurry.

But this thing with Ben… it was overwhelming.

It was one thing to reject the interest of others, and quite another to feel it herself for the first time. _And so much of it_. She figured it was just the situation they found themselves in: trapped in this tiny place with nowhere to go, the physical nearness and the intimacy of having nothing and no one else to look at was forcing her to hyper-focus on him. And she was sure their earlier life-and-death struggle also brought to the forefront of her monkey brain these survival… _urges_.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting. But he was practically a _stranger_. She didn’t have to give in to her baser instincts.

With this in mind, she took a fortifying breath and centered herself on the thought: _I can handle this_.

Still, when she came out of the bathroom and found him awake and propped up on his good side on the bed, her eyes skittered away from his. And her panicked mind wanted to know: _Did he know?_

As she glided to the kitchenette, perfectly placid, his deep voice washed over her: “Hey.”

“Hey,” she answered back, popping her head into her fridge.

“Sleep okay?”

She wondered if there was more to his question than the simple inquiry, and strained her ears for any hint of innuendo.

“Well enough.” Nice and cool.

“You… didn’t sleep on the floor after all.”

The diminishing coldness of the air in the fridge was a relief on her burning cheeks.

“You were moaning in your sleep. I think you might have been having a nightmare. I was just making sure you were okay.” She dug out Maz’s sausages and slaw and sniffed them. Still good. “Your wound feel any better?”

He grunted a non-committal reply but didn’t say anything more about how they… slept.

She figured she was safe.

She could hear him getting up and stretching his limbs as she ferried Maz’s offerings, as well as a package of white bread and a small jar of her favorite strawberry jam, to the low table. She heated water in her blackened saucepan, and then tried to toast a few slices of bread by holding them up with forks over the open fire, managing to drop only a single slice. The toast was uneven as the cheap starch burned unpredictably.

“I have instant coffee… is that okay?”

He sighed. “Never thought I’d say this, but caffeine is caffeine, I guess.”

Good Host Rey offered, “There’s cocoa, if you want that instead.”

“Coffee’s fine.”

Her rabbit mug looked ridiculously tiny in his hand as he sipped the hot brew without complaint. The rain had gentled a bit, and she let his audible sipping and chewing wash over her. She told herself that men scratching their naked chests in the morning must be an everyday thing and nothing noteworthy whatsoever. She couldn’t seem to remember Unkar doing that though.

He seemed to be enjoying the sausages a lot, so she told him they were from Maz.

“Did she and Chewie ever get married?”

It kept throwing her how he knew all these people from so long ago. It gave her a weird sense of nostalgia, as though she was reminiscing with an old friend. Which made absolutely no sense since their respective times in Chandrila far from overlapped.

“Uh… they’re together, but no, not married.”

“Huh. But they live together?” She tried not to stare at his lips which shone with oil from the meat links.

“On and off, I think. They still have their own places. Works for them, I guess.”

“Mm. Must be hard on their sex life though.”

Rey choked on her toast.

“Too dry, huh?” he asked wryly.

She wheezed, pounding her chest. “The jam helps.”

“That’s like having candy for breakfast.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you one of those gluten-free, paleo, keto-whatever nuts?”

“No. Just one of those jam-is-not-my-thing nuts.”

“Well. I like it. It’s nice and fruity.” She took an extra big bite defiantly and got red stuff all over her upper lip.

He stopped chewing as he stared, and then motioned with his hand. “Strawberry jam is barely a fruit.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, swiping at her lip. “You know, I’ve never had fresh strawberries.”

“Why not?”

She was annoyed that she had to spell it out for him. “They’re expensive. So… jam it is for me.”

They finished up in what Rey thought was companionable silence. When she rose to clean up the dishes, he gathered some himself. They fell into an easy rhythm of soaping, rinsing and drying by the sink. Everything seemed small next to him and in his hands. _She_ felt positively tiny standing beside him.

It was getting too comfortable, so Rey spoke up.

“Your parents are away, if you didn’t know. They’re in Ahch-To with Luke. Staying there for a week. I mean… Leia and Luke’s birthday… you know.”

His hands slowed down from drying. “Yeah. I read the messages on your phone.”

She ignored the irritating reminder. “So I was thinking, since the rain’s let up a little, I should probably check the house for painkillers, and maybe food. I’ve got a ke—”

He dropped the dish towel at this and grabbed her wrist. When she looked up, annoyed, his gaze was sharp on her.

“You better not call anyone.” The command in his voice made her hackles rise.

She tried shaking his hand off. And wasn’t successful. “You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t do.”

“I mean it, Rey. No one can know I’m here.” His voice was hard.

“Or what?” she snapped. “You’re going to tie me up again? Hold a knife on me again?”

The flint in his eyes melted into something else entirely, his eyes wide pools of brown. She could see his throat working. But Rey had been too scared, and was now too mad for it.

“Why did you even come back here in the first place?” she hissed.

He had no answer for her, and so she stomped off, leaving the washing unfinished. She grabbed a change of clothing and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

She was more collected when she came out minutes later, but she refused to look at him as he stood by the bathroom door. As she put on her knee-length rain slicker and her boots, she thought her voice was more even than he deserved when she asked, “Do you want anything from the house?”

“No.” It was so low she barely heard it.

But when she was about to step out the door, he spoke up again, in the same low voice.

“Rey.”

She turned her head in his direction but didn’t look at him.

“Don’t take too long.”

 

*******

 

Even with the high windows letting in a decent amount of light, the house was spooky in its gloomy emptiness. It was also much colder than the cottage had been, but at least it wasn’t as cold as outside. This was the first time in years that she felt like a nervous trespasser, but she reassured herself that she actually wasn’t one this time and that she had Han and Leia’s permission to be in here.

She wondered what the Solos would think if they knew Ben was in their property right now. They would probably take the first flight home available and rush to take him in their arms. But to what end? There was nothing in Ben’s words and actions that indicated that he was here for a heartfelt homecoming. Quite the opposite, actually. So maybe it was better that they didn’t know. They didn’t deserve any more heartbreak.

So… just why was Ben here? He could have run to any number of places.

She was surprised to realize, looking around the space now, that there were no family pictures to be seen anywhere.

Before yesterday, she had no idea what he looked like, and never really wondered. But now, it was easy to see the physical similarities. His personality, though… it was like a twisted version of his parents’ traits, all in one surly package. Where Leia was elegant, he seemed to have an annoying sense of superiority. Where Han’s charm disarmed, he was domineering and forceful.

But it wasn’t difficult to imagine Ben in this beautiful house as he was now. She could perfectly picture him striding like a prince down the curving white stairs, or draping his long limbs over any of the chintz couches, maybe swirling a glass of whiskey in his hand.

But what had he been like as a teenager, right when he left?

_Trouble,_ Poe had said he was. Got into a lot of fights. She’d been very familiar with kids like that back in school. And she knew to stay out of their way. Had he been like that, too?

She sighed. How could Ben have left all this behind?

She flicked a lamp switch, on the off chance that the house somehow still had power—but nothing. She felt a pang of disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to use the computer after all. Still, she walked into the study and stopped in front of a shelf, squinting her eyes to read the titles. Seeing all the books in here reminded her that she didn’t leave Ben anything to do in the cottage. But she didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of taking any of Leia’s books. She wouldn’t know what Ben liked to read, anyway. She chuckled at the image of him finding her very small stash of comics, courtesy of Finn, and trashy romance novels, courtesy of Rose. Maybe she’d actually offer them later.

She found the first aid kit right where she expected to. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet in the half bath, popped the red box on her lap open and riffled through its contents before deciding it would probably be better to just take the whole thing.

She placed the kit on a counter in the kitchen and then opened the fridge. Han and Leia’s generosity was known all over town, but she still had to remind herself that she was not stealing their food… not really. And anything she took would be for their overgrown cad of a son, anyway. Besides, she couldn’t take much: after the first aid kit, there wouldn’t be much room left in her scooter basket.

The pears were still nice and crisp, and the eggs reassuringly cold. There was something that looked like leftover meatloaf, but she was almost a hundred percent certain that Leia made it, and so it stayed in its container. The only thing she took out of their stacked freezer was a single package of bacon. All this she carefully placed in a plastic bag she dug out of her pocket.

As she walked past the stairs back in the entrance hall on her way out, the thought of Ben’s old room crossed her mind. She’d never been upstairs all these years—never had any reason to be. It would be so easy to just run up there and take a quick peek—if she could even find his among all the rooms there. A teenager’s room. When he left, he was closer in age to her now than the present Ben was. Would there be band posters on his wall? Mecha robots on a shelf? Had Leia even preserved his room as it was all this time?

She marshaled the impulse to find out and rushed out of the house, locking the door behind her.

 

*******

 

When she walked back into the cottage, it was to the sight of Ben burning a jagged, barefoot path all across her floor. As soon as the door opened, he stopped in his tracks, and his worried eyes locked on hers.

“You were gone for almost an hour.” It was almost an accusation. But he came over and helped her unload the food onto the tile counter, so she bit back her retort.

His hair was a mess, as if he’d been running his hands through it over and over. His face seemed even paler than it usually was, the scratch over the right side of it all the more prominent.

“I got stuff for your wound.” She shook the first aid kit up at him. “How is it?”

He brushed his hand absently over his side as if he only just remembered it and nodded. It was a weird response to her question.

“Did you call anyone?” he asked, as though the question had been wanting to burst out of him as soon as she got back.

“They don’t have a land line at the house, so no. And the power’s out… couldn’t use their computer.”

“Okay. Okay.” He ran a hand over his face shakily.

Just what had happened to this guy?

“We should change your bandage. I got gauze.”

But before they could do that, she thought it would be better if he could wash up somehow. It probably said something about how distracted he was that she managed to convince him that she can help wash his hair. And so over the bathroom sink she alternately ran cold water from the tap and poured hot water from her sad saucepan over his ridiculously rich locks. He bitched as she lathered him up, and even dared to comment on the lack of conditioner, and if she pulled his hair a bit at his whining, it was with absolutely zero remorse.

She stood by as he wiped down what he could reach comfortably of himself with a warm washcloth that smelled like her soap, and was glad he was facing away from her as she did the same for his broad back. She tried not to think too much of how they were washing away his scent and replacing it with hers.

They sat by the fire to dry out. He was visibly relieved at finally having decent bandaging, but afterwards scowled once more at her when she presented him with a faded grey shirt, a superhero cartoon character emblazoned on it.

“It’s the only thing I have that will fit you.”

“It’s too big for you. Whose is it?” he asked as he glared at the offending garment.

“It’s Finn’s,” was all she said.

“Finn… the guy with Poe. Who you drove with from Jakku.”

“Mm.”

“So you don’t have a boyfriend,” he said as he pulled the shirt over his head, “but you have an _ex_ -boyfriend right here in town.” The shirt settled a bit more snugly over his muscles than it had on Finn’s.

She was sorely tempted to smack his injury. “Finn is my _best_ friend. He’s also an or—” She ground her teeth over the rest of it. He didn’t need to know that.

“If he’s anything like Dameron, he must be _lovely_ ,” he drawled as he ran _her_ comb lazily through his hair.

“Are all your friends as miserable as you?” she snapped. “Do you even have any?”

To her surprise, instead of flinging back a reply, he went quiet, his brow scrunching thoughtfully.

Finally, he murmured, “I have people I work with, but… I don’t know if I’d call them friends.”

She was even more surprised he’d admit something like that. “How can you not be sure if someone’s your friend?”

He sighed. “Sometimes we go out for drinks. But most of the time we’re just… trying not to kill each other, I guess.”

Rey gasped, her eyes shooting to his injury.

“No, no! Not like that! Just… over projects. It’s a… competitive workplace.”

She only looked at him, not entirely trusting his answer. Absently she scratched at the makeshift bandage on her arm. The tape was getting really itchy. Ben’s eyes followed the motion of her fingers.

“Is it bad?” He bobbed his head in the direction of her arm.

“Well, bad is what usually happens when someone tries to stab you. What do you think?” she snipped.

“I wasn’t trying to stab you. You just moved too close too fast.”

“Right. You tried to choke me to death, too. And to snap my neck. Was I moving too fast for those too?”

“I wasn’t going to sna—look, we’ve been through this. I thought you were here to kill me.” He threw her comb down.

“You couldn’t have asked first?” she all but shrieked.

“This isn’t some movie where the bad guy gives a speech on what he’s about to do right before he does it!” he shouted right back.

“So you do admit to being the bad guy!” she crowed triumphantly.

“That’s not—you got that ass backwa— _fuck!_ ”

In his frustration, he pounded his knee with his fist and then slammed himself backwards onto the floor in a sudden motion, knocking his own breath out. Rey could almost feel the impact all the way from where she sat, and she scurried and bent over him. His eyes were glazed, his mouth open in a silent cry of pain.

“Ben! _Shit!_ Are you okay?!” She ran her hands all over him, unthinking in her panic. _“Ben! Talk to me!”_

Her hand settled on his cheek, and her thumb worked its way frantically over his skin. His eyes moved to hers, and she watched as the pained haze slowly drained out of them. He caught his breath in aching moans.

“Dammit, Ben, don't fucking scare me like that.” She pulled her hand back to herself when she realized what she'd been doing. “Are you okay?”

“I think so, yeah. I mean I don't want to move again for the next three days.” He let out a huff that seemed a lot like laughter to Rey.

When the sound died, they just looked at each other, firelight flickering over their faces. The circular accusations and vitriol had sapped her energy, and he seemed similarly done with it. For now.

After a while, she asked in a calmer voice, if a bit stiffly, “So who was trying to get you killed? Just… who did this to you?”

He swallowed a few times and then sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

She watched him as he lay next to her, lost in his thoughts, eyes locked on her bandage.

Suddenly he lifted his hand to her arm, and his thumb worried the frayed edge of the tape. She forgot to breathe for a second. She felt goose bumps erupt over her arms—and lightning bolts of sensation everywhere else— _because of the tape tugging on the tiny hairs, of course_. It wasn’t like he was _caressing_ her skin. He _wasn’t_.

He slowly pulled the rest of it off until only a bit of tape held the folded paper towel to her arm. But it wasn’t as if he was _stripping_ her. Because he _wasn’t_.

“We should change this too,” he said, and his voice _wasn’t_ a low croon that traveled along her spine like slow, thick lava. His eyes _weren’t_ molten chocolate in the firelight as he looked up at her.

And that _wasn’t_ a smile teasing the corner of his lips when he said, “I could wash your back, too, if you want.”

But that was _definitely_ her heart dropping to her stomach.

 

*******

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a slow-ish chapter to give our favorite tsundere couple a chance to get to know each other better. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and for your nice words down in the comments which really warms my heart! :)
> 
> P.S. Ninja edit on the last part, for effect. :8 whoops


	6. Chapter 6

*******

 

There was absolutely no way that Ben would have missed how Rey’s legs had the strength of overcooked macaroni as she stumbled out of the cottage after babbling an incoherent response. That was bad enough, but being in the same room with him, _looking at him look at her_ as she processed what he said would have surely sent her right into some kind of… virginal apoplexy. Which prior to this day she never would have imagined could possibly occur outside the realm of Rose’s stupid historical erotica.

The rain—which had picked up again—helped snap her out of it as she ran once again into her car port. But once she got there, there was nothing to do but listen to the wind slap the water around. She was glad that she’d at least still had enough presence of mind to slip on her boots before running out. Over the tarp that covered her bike she sat and shivered. It was only a little past noon, but she felt like lying down already. Just thinking of how the rest of the day stretched out before her in all its inescapable Ben-splendored glory made her want to just crawl into a corner and sleep it away in safe oblivion.

The man was doing an effortless job at destroying her earlier determination to stay cool about this whole thing. It was easier to stay on track when he was being a total grump and she could bite back at him, or even when he was in too much pain that all her energy could be burned in her efforts to make him stop hurting. But he’d somehow graduated from that into making stupid suggestive jokes in his boredom. She was simply not ready to deal with that, especially since she hadn’t expected it at all.

He’d dragged her through the extremes of fear and anger, and yet here she was, getting all bothered by a pair of pretty eyes. She hated what that said about her. Whether or not he was being honest about not really intending to hurt her yesterday was a moot point, as the truth of the matter remained that he’d practically traumatized her and _hadn’t even apologized for it_.

But she could almost hear Jessika Pava talking so elegantly about _wanting the D_. Or _wanting to climb him like a tr_ — _gods_ , all these expressions she’d only ever thought of as stupidly funny. She really didn’t feel like laughing now.

She wished she could lay her head on Rose’s lap right now and listen to her wisdom on matters such as this.

Not that she’d ever tell her.

When it seemed like she’d wasted enough time moping around outside in _goddamned cyclone weather_ —and when her teeth felt like they’d fused from chattering so much from the chill—she got off her ass and plucked some more wood from her supply. It would have to do as an excuse, although she’d have to carry them inside in her bare arms. At least if she got splinters, that would give her something to take care of for a good chunk of time. She almost welcomed the idea.

When she stepped back into the cottage, she found her guest seated in front of the fire, his tree trunk legs splayed carelessly before him—he was getting way too comfortable, Rey thought—and his eyes flicked from the book in his hand—she didn’t know if she liked that he found her Jedi book—to sweep her entire body before landing on her face.

“You’re wet.”

If her thighs clenched at the bastard’s eloquent statement, she was _not_ about to let it show. Besides, he was only talking about her rain-soaked appearance.

“That is what the rain does,” she evenly replied.

“If you’d told me you needed wood, I could have helped you get all the wood that you wanted.”

There was nothing deliberate about that drawl. Nothing at all. She gritted her teeth and just said, “I got it.”

Unfortunately, she had to walk over his legs to get to the fire and dump the wood next to it, and as she gingerly lifted her feet over them she was almost overcome by the urge to throw a chunk at his gloriously tousled head. She jumped when she felt his foot nudge hers as she knelt.

“You’ve been a very, _very_ bad girl, Rey.”

 _That’s it_ , he was so going to get it—

But he wasn’t looking at her this time, and before she could smack his shin with a piece of wood, he continued—

“This book was last checked out… hmm… seven years ago, this says. Are you planning to finance a new library wing with your late fees?” He tapped the back of the book with a long finger.

Rey scowled at him and held out her hand. “Just… give it here.”

“But then I don’t see your name on here. Unless you’re actually… hmm… _Charlie Kim_ , and you’ve been lying to me about this _Rey_ business the whole time.”

She sighed and looked heavenward, defeated. “No, I am not Charlie Kim. Charlie Kim was this short kid with dodgy eyes who thought it was funny to fart out loud in the library right next to the _Quiet, Please_ sign. And the book wouldn’t have been missed, okay?”

He ignored the hand that she was still shaking. “Are you related to Obi Wan Kenobi, then? That’s not a very common name. Is that why you felt it was acceptable to steal this book from your school library?”

His eyes were perfectly, innocently round as he asked his stupid question.

“How’d you even—did I tell you my full name?” She didn’t remember doing so.

“No, your Kanata Konvenience Super Saver text thread did.”

She glared at him a bit more before dropping her gaze to her book and reminding herself that Obi Wan probably wouldn’t want her to maim her tormentor. Not over this, anyway.

 She sighed again. “I changed my last name legally two years ago. I wasn’t… very attached to the one I’d been using. And _Kenobi_ was a name that meant something to me.” She gestured to the book. “Leia thought it was perfect. Apparently she knew him. She told me he was a good man.” She smiled at the memory. It had been one of the happiest days of her life, the day she’d finally felt truly free of Unkar’s influence in her life.

“He was a close friend of Leia’s… adoptive family.” He looked at her as if he was checking if she knew this bit of Leia’s history.

“The Organas, yeah. He was also your uncle’s teacher.”

His voice cooled. “Kenobi’s pretty much where Luke got all his fancy ideas. But then I guess it runs strong in the family to start with. He’s afflicted with the same hero disease as his sister.”

Just like that, she was getting annoyed again. “Would you stop saying—”

“Ahch-To, though… I guess he moved his school of peace bullshit there. The isolation would be ideal, I imagine… really drum those ideas into kids’ heads where they won’t be able to escape them.”

She was about to launch into a speech in defense of Leia, but her sudden curiosity about this thing with Luke stayed her hot words. “A school? You mean a literal… school?”

Ben snorted. “I’m surprised no one told you. He used to run one right here in town. Specialized in… re-educating troubled boys.” His eyes looked as flat as his voice sounded.

Rey suddenly remembered the conversation she’d had with Poe. About Ben moving schools after he’d almost been expelled for fighting. And the trouble that followed him even there, too much of it that he’d had to leave town—

“I was named after Kenobi, you know. _Ben_ was what they called him. So… they kind of retrofitted Benjamin around it.”

Rey was surprised at this connection between them. She’d taken the name of _his_ namesake. She didn’t know what to feel about that.

“So as soon as I was born, I already came attached with Kenobi’s life philosophy, the Organa politics and Solo’s fame.” He huffed humorlessly.

But Rey thought of the man and woman whose faces she’d forgotten, whose names were buried in the newspaper side story that told of their post-drug-fueled orgy overdose, whose only legacy were as the very upstanding Unkar Plutt’s cautionary tale.

So she told him, “That’s better than nothing.”

She knew he understood from the way he looked at her. But still he said, “You’d think so, but then you haven’t carried the weight of it with you everywhere.”

After a moment of silence, she said, “Luke… he wasn’t what I expected, not after hearing he was Obi Wan Kenobi’s follower. He’s some kind of subsistence farmer these days. Sells milk or what. Han said he’s a bit of a hermit, barely sees other people. I don’t know… he seemed pretty… tired to me. I don’t think he’s the same person you knew before.”

Ben had put down her book and was now staring at the fire, and if Rey had to guess, he was probably deep in his memories. After a while, she left him to his thoughts and dug her playing cards out of a drawer under her second-hand TV. She hadn’t played solitaire with real cards in forever. The pack had been one of her few sources of entertainment back in Niima, which had been perfect for playing alone and playing quietly. But after she came here and got a decent phone, the cards were permanently upstaged by the multitude of flashy games available.

The feel of the old paper and plastic in her hands brought back a familiar sense of peace. The shuffling sound was like the greeting of an old friend, and the card faces smiled back at her as she laid them one by one on the low table.

She didn’t notice she had an audience until Ben scooted over to sit in front of her across the table. He watched wordlessly as she lost a few rounds, and then he was taking the cards from her hands, his fingers brushing against hers. He asked if she knew how to play rummy, and after she said no, he announced he was going to teach her just enough that she knew the game but he could still beat her. His hands dwarfed the cards and were a little awkward at shuffling them, and she had to cut her brain off before it could convince her that it looked endearing.

They whiled the early afternoon away playing rummy and munching on tangy pear slices, but his earlier declaration proved to be wrong as she started beating him more and more, until she told him victory didn’t taste as sweet anymore if that’s all you had. He grumbled as he crawled back to his spot before the fire and lay down to take a nap, and she figured taking one herself would be a better use of her time over watching the superhero swordsman on his chest rise and fall with his even breathing, his limbs spread loosely around him.

She woke up to a sizzling sound and a wonderful aroma. There was barely any light left outside, and when she looked over, she saw Ben hunkered down by the fire. She rubbed her eyes as she plopped down next to him.

“That smells heavenly,” she told him around her yawn. She was very happy now that she’d taken some of Han’s bacon, which was now crisping beautifully in her skillet as he held it over the fire.

“You know what, _Charlie Kim_ , you probably wouldn’t be passing so much gas if you ate more vegetables. That,” he said as he pointed accusingly to something on the counter, which she recognized as the withered carrot that had been rattling loosely in her vegetable drawer for a while now, “was all you had in your fridge.”

“That’s a _lie_. I have cheese too.”

“I said _vegetable_. Cheese is not a vegetable. And that thing barely passes as cheese.”

“It’s easy to be a food snob when you have the money to be one.”

He sighed. “I’m not a food snob. You just make food like a teenager.”

“Well. No one’s complained.”

He shot her an incredulous look. “What kind of people do you even bring over?”

“See, that’s the secret to it. _Don’t_ bring anyone over.”

“Ah. I guess that would be difficult, seeing as you don’t even have chairs.”

“Look, just be glad I don’t. Or I'd have made you wear one around your head already.”

And then the man _laughed_. The sound strummed her nerves, and when she looked at his twinkling eyes and the deep lines of amusement that bracketed his plush mouth, she forgot to breathe.

_Shit._

The oblivious object of her attention rose from the fireside to slide the bacon onto a plate.

“Fine, maybe we can make an omelette. Can you beat those eggs?”

She did just that, but he had to squawk at her to stop over-beating. He dumped the eggs and the carrots and cheese he’d grated together into the bacon grease, exclaiming mournfully that he should have made the eggs before the bacon.

They sat down, and while his bacon-oil omelette could have looked better, it had her moaning in bliss as she shoveled it into her mouth. But for whatever reason, Ben was choking on his side of the table even as she praised his cooking. He told her after he’d recovered from his coughing fit that it was one of the things he liked doing in his free time.

She decided it was okay to tell him, “You’d like Leia’s kitchen. She’s got everything. She loves cooking too. But she… hasn’t gotten the hang of it like you have.” She smiled around her fork at the memory of Leia’s disastrous dinners.

“I don’t get to cook much these days. Work’s been a bitch.”

He seemed particularly absorbed in chewing his bacon after that. But since he’d brought it up, Rey decided to risk asking him about it.

“So… what do you do?”

She thought he wasn’t going to answer after all. But after a few swallows, he said, “Real estate.”

It was difficult to picture his grumpy ass in real estate. She could just imagine how he’d scare away clients with his awful temper and his sarcasm. But who knew. And then it crossed her mind how bad he must find her tiny space. She had the guy _sitting on the floor eating dinner off of a coffee table_. It was everything to her, but it was certainly not going to win any kind of Cottage Digest or whatever award. On top of that, he was an _Organa_.

“You must get to see fancy houses all the time, then.”

“Ah, no. It’s for commercial and industrial properties.”

She had no idea what that entailed, so the only question she thought to ask was, “Do you like it?”

Ben looked at her with surprise in his eyes, like he'd never considered it before.

“It’s what I do. It’s like asking if I like breathing.”

“ _I_ like what I do.”

That half-smile again. “Do you, now?”

“Mm-hmm. It’s very satisfying. Looking at something, figuring out what’s wrong, working with my hands.” She put down her fork, wriggled her fingers and then ran her thumb over them. And then grimaced as she felt the calluses that had become their permanent feature. She knew he wouldn’t see anyway, but her hands automatically dropped to her lap under the edge of the table. She was very conscious of his eyes following the motion.

“How did you get to be one, anyway?” he asked.

Her mind drifted to her days under the hot sun, sweating over bits and pieces of metal, bent under rusty hoods as she figured out how to take everything apart as quickly as she could. Nobody needed to know about Unkar’s more illicit operations. That was all in her past.

And so she only said, “The man who… raised me, he owned a junk yard. It was just… what I did. Like breathing.”

They finished soon after, and he began to clear away the plates. When she made to help him, he swatted her hands away, telling her he needed something to do.

But now _she_ had nothing to do. She asked his back where his phone was.

“I don’t have it anymore. And even if I still did, it’s not like I’d let you use it.”

This, after he’d practically destroyed hers. “Gee, thanks.”

She opened the door, and apparently he heard the hinges squeaking.

He stepped back from the sink, his hands dripping soap all over the floor, so he could look at her, and then asked, “Where are you going?”

“Clubbing downtown,” she deadpanned as she stepped onto the porch.

But he must have seen that she remained barefoot because he only replied with, “ ’Kay, I won’t wait up.”

The sky was a luminous red behind its curtain of rain as Rey looked up at it. The trees looked just as tired of this cyclone business as she was, and just as battered: they stood mostly naked under the tormenting torrent, their dark limbs clawing angrily at the wind. But once the storm passed, it wouldn’t take long for them to regrow their green cover and look as resplendent as ever. They wouldn’t have any memory of their helpless disgrace.

She wondered if it would be the same for her.

She knew her short time with Ben had changed her forever. She could never return to the person she was before he came. He’d stormed into her life much like this cyclone and upended the tranquility she’d found in her little corner of the world. This man whose own monsters he couldn’t even tell her about that seemed to be nipping at his heels even now, who’d escaped this paradise because it had never been that for him… Suddenly nothing made sense.

But she would have to deal with it the same way she always had. Just bear it and keep going. So far it had worked okay for her. And at least now, she’d had a taste of a peace that she knows she can always come back to if she tried hard enough.

What would her wise Rose tell her, if she knew? What would her Finn say, with his tender heart? How could she ever explain this to Han and Leia?

And after he left, would she ever see him again?

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes when she realized he was standing behind her at the open doorway. His shadowed form was limned by the fire from inside the house. He held something in his hand which he brought up to his mouth.

Over the sound of the rain, she heard him say, “I found your cocoa. Want some?”

She smiled at yet another liberty he’d taken. And then she surprised them both by stepping up to him until her damp toes touched his, and took a sip from her bunny mug in his hand. Which he hadn’t let go of. Her fingers wrapped around his as she tilted the cup to her lips. The hot chocolate was an explosion of flavor in her mouth and painted a line of fire as she swallowed it down. At least that’s what she thought it was.

She didn’t let go right away.

She could barely see his face in the dark, but she could feel the weight of his gaze on her as they stood inches from each other. And then his free hand made its way to her jaw, and his thumb was stroking her lower lip. She wasn’t sure if he was rubbing the cocoa away from her skin or into it.

But he stepped back and into the house, leaving her with the warmth of the chocolate curling in her belly.

When she came in minutes later, she headed straight for the bathroom and took care of her pre-sleep business. But the cold water and the toothpaste couldn’t completely wash away the warmth from her face and the lingering sweetness in her mouth.

He was sitting in front of the fire when she stepped out of the bathroom, his broad back a fortress which seemed impossible to breach right now. So she lay on the bed and presented her own to him.

There was nothing to see outside the window.

She found herself asking, “Are you going to sleep now?”

His low voice crossed the room to her pricked ears. “Yeah, I guess.”

The silence after that was a cacophony that chased away sleep.

“Ben,” she tried again, aiming for courage. “Come to bed.”

“I’m okay here.”

She had always been a little rock, curled around herself. That’s how she’d survived all this time. And at least tears were warm, and right now, they helped keep her eyes shut.

She must have made a sound—a shuffle, a sniffle, something—because suddenly the bed was dipping behind her under his weight, and she had to curl tighter around herself to not fall backwards into his gravity well.

“Ever looked under the hood of a TIE Silencer?” he asked. Strange thing to talk about right before sleeping. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“No.”

“Four years ago, I bought one.”

Four years ago, she’d jumped into Poe’s car—which was far from a TIE Silencer—and never looked back.

“Wow. I mean… you’re loaded. No surprises there.”

“I’d been wanting it for a while. It’s pretty sweet. Thing is, I hardly get the chance to enjoy it. Don’t have a lot of free time to just drive around, you know, much as I’d like to. And it calls too much attention when I take it to work, which is… not ideal.”

Ben in a Silencer. Ideal or not, the image just fit. He would ride it like it was part of him. Its growls would be his growls, and it would eat up the road in much the same way he burned the path before him with his long strides. And if it was a color other than black, she’d eat her blanket.

“But do you use it?”

“It sits in my garage. It’s nice to look at.” He chuckled sadly.

“What do you plan to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Might sell it—who knows. I’ve just gotten used to having it there.” A long sigh. “But yeah… I imagine you’d like checking it out. I never really got into all that… tinkering stuff, not like Da—Han.”

Her breath caught as she wondered, as she hoped _stupidly_ , if that had been an invitation. But she didn’t dare ask.

The bed creaked, and suddenly his arm was around her shoulders, then slid down and finally settled on her abdomen under her arms, pulling her to his warmth. She choked on her breath. In an instant her extremities were all numb, and she felt lightheaded as her blood struggled to go nowhere that made sense.

“Ben, your wound—”

“It’s okay. Go to sleep.”

She was closer to fainting than falling asleep.

“Good night, Rey.”

It took some time for her to say it back.

“Good night, Ben.”

She had died, she was suddenly sure of it. The monster yesterday had killed her, and in this limbo she’d dreamed up this whole thing with Ben, who was really just a fragment of a story in her subconscious. This was what death felt like, this warm shadow blanketing her, and these sensations were her body’s dying memories of how it felt like to have nerves shooting off.

But then he said against her hair in a tight voice, “Just for tonight.”

There were no tonights or tomorrows in limbo, were there?

And so she turned in her warm shadow’s arms in this not-quite-limbo, and she wrapped her own around his back, and pressed her face to his chest.

 _Infinite time._ And yet his heart refused to settle down to sleep under her ear. And his lungs were a bellows that burned all the oxygen around her and made it hard to breathe.

_Just for tonight._

She wondered if he meant he was leaving the next day. She wondered if this was her only chance to have him in her arms. She wondered just how badly regret would sear her soul in the days, weeks, months that followed. And what exactly it was that she'd regret.

In a flurry of breathless motion, she crawled over him and off the bed. She could sense him getting up on his elbows, could perfectly see the bafflement on his face as he stared at her back, without her looking at him. She got on her knees and felt around under the table. _It isn’t here_ , screamed through her mind in a panic. But it _was_ there, and her hand wrapped around the heavy leather, and flipped it open, and felt around and pulled out just what she was looking for—

And then she was bending over him in her low bed and taking his hand, pressing her closed fist to it, and she was searching his eyes in the darkness for some kind of hint that _this was okay_ , but she couldn’t look too long at what she saw there, so she pressed her lips to his rough jaw and laid herself on the altar of his chest, and then there was nothing but his breath sawing harshly against her ear, and the pounding of her heart, and the desperate wish in it—

No, there was nothing wrong with just wanting. But she was realizing now—and hopefully not too late—with Ben under her like this, the galaxies in his eyes she had to look away from—

There was nothing wrong with _having_ , either.

She opened her hand, and she knew he knew what was in it.

“Ben… _just for tonight_ … please.”

_If he said no…_

His fingers brushed a shaky caress against her arm, and up her shoulder and over the back of her neck, until his hand was a hot vice that bound her to him, and his lips and his teeth were wet on her skin, and his voice crackling, burning thunder against her ear—

_“Rey…”_

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on, Rey, that's not very subtle at all. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and for your kudos and your very kind comments, which make it feel like Christmas in August and September. Seriously, you make me literally go "WHEEEEE!!!" like a kid that encounters her crush with every new one. <3


	7. Chapter 7

*******

 

Ben didn’t say more than her name, but even in Rey’s inexperience, this didn’t seem like a _no_.

There was nothing but _sensation_.

It was one thing, she was discovering, for him to have held her in anger, for her to have touched him in comfort, and all the fleeting moments of contact in between, and quite another to have his hands given free rein to move all over her body. Each stroke raised a fire devil on the surface of her skin where they landed, and she _burned_.

His hand on the back of her neck moved her head to make way for the damp glide of lips and teeth. The rough cadence of his breathing lulled her into a grey haze, but she thought she heard herself moan out loud when he nipped at the skin of her jaw.

But then his hands found their way under her arms, and for a second Rey felt strangely weightless. She only realized what Ben was doing when she landed on his other side on the bed, right next to the wall. He’d dragged her across him with a grunt, and now his big body caged hers in a dark cocoon.

His hulking form was outlined by the firelight, but beyond that, Rey couldn’t really see much under her heavy eyelids.

_“Rey…”_

He whispered her name again, not an inch from her lips. He nipped at them once, and then pulled back, and then did it again. Rey felt like a baby bird straining for a meal, but he wouldn’t give her more than these feathery touches, until she had enough of his teasing and she grabbed his shirt and pressed her lips fully against his.

 _Warm and soft_ , like she knew they would be. It was a crime how pretty they were, and she’d been entranced by how they wrapped around his words, his food, his frustration, and that rare moment of his very visible amusement. And now _this_.

And then he was kissing her back, turning her as liquid as his tongue felt, sliding wetly against her lips until she opened up for him. She could taste the cocoa and the toothpaste that he’d taken without permission—and it felt like he was taking _this_ without permission, too, plundering her breath and her pleasure, right from her mouth and her own tongue. His kisses plucked strings on her body she hadn’t even known were connected, and though they were only touching her lips, she twitched and twanged in _other places_.

He moved back a little, and she remembered to breathe, even against his arm under her side which crushed her ribs. His other hand cupped her head and kept her close, so close that his next words, though they were barely a whisper—and a hesitant one, at that, as though he wasn’t sure he should breathe life to the question—felt like they boomed across the inch of space between them.

“Rey… is this your first time?”

It probably _was_ that obvious, she knew, but knowing didn’t stem the rush of embarrassment. She probably kissed him wrong. Or touched him too eagerly. She drew her hands back, which she realized were still crushing his shirt and announcing just  what brand of desperate little virgin she was. Was that why he stopped?

But there was no point in lying, and so she said in a voice as tiny as she felt right now, “Yes.”

“Have you done… anything?”

She shook her head and curled her arms over her chest to help fortify her heart against her mumbled admission.

“Someone tried to kiss me in high school, but… I didn’t like it, and…”

“And…?” His thumb rubbed against the space under her lip, as if it was trying to draw the words out.

“… and nothing more, really, with anyone else. But I… I’ve… you know…”

She could feel his eyes on her in the dark. There was no shame in what she was about to tell him, but knowing he was watching her so keenly made her feel so… exposed.

“What was that, Rey?”

There was no hiding from this man.

“I’ve… touched myself.”

The groan that he let out felt like it escaped from his soul, and in the next second he was crushing her to him again, pressing her face against his neck. The man just _had_ to smell good on top of everything else. She felt faint from the need to just breathe the spice of his skin in. His own breath drummed a ragged staccato against the top of her head.

“Okay… okay… I just needed to be sure…”

She tilted her head back at his words and looked up at him, wondering why he sounded like he was trying to reassure himself with his own words. He took that as an invitation to put his lips on hers again. _Fucking sweet Naboo ambrosia_ his kisses were, and the sounds he was making was the sound of the nectar dripping down to her waiting lips.

“Put your arms around me” was his first command, and though they shook, her limbs lifted around his shoulders without question, and caught not only his neck but his hummed approval as well. Ben’s hands slid inside her shirt and traced up her spine, his palms deliciously rough against her skin, making her sigh in the sheer rapture of it. But her sighs soon turned into strangled moans as those same hands moved lower and cupped the cheeks of her ass over her sleep pants.

Her knee took that as its natural cue to slide up his thigh and lock itself around his hip, and in the space that it opened up, he slid home.

She tore her mouth from his with a cry when his hardness rubbed against the top of her mound. He must have taken the sound as supplication because in the next moment he gave her just what she needed. With his hands still squeezing her ass, he began grinding himself up and down her melting core, each slide making her aching muscles squeeze out more of their welcoming moisture, until she was sure that he could feel just how wet he was making her even through their clothes.

And yet he _still_ had to ask, “Baby, is this good for you?” as if she wasn’t already panting with her own efforts to match his movements, her hips angling themselves so he can hit her— _just so_ —right where she most needed it.

“Ben, please—right there—”

And when he grabbed her ass hard and stopped her desperate motions, she let out a frustrated whine, but he just kissed her hard, once, twice—

“Shh… shh, sweetie— _fuck_ —let’s get these off you—”

—and he was tearing her bottoms off and then stroking her once more, and she let him soothe her just like that, just kneading her cheeks with his big, gentle hands over her panties.

He pushed her on her back and loomed over her, and she could feel his gaze raking over the surfaces of her body. She couldn’t bear the thought of him assessing her like this so openly. She knew she was as plain as they came, her breasts and her hips barely making a dent in her clothing. She usually didn’t think too much about it, and she was in fact very grateful for her strong, agile body which made rolling tires and hauling her tools and shimmying under cars and trucks so easy.

But Ben was fucking _beautiful_ and made her teeth ache with want of him.

She wanted to be brave, and so she let him look all he wanted, but she couldn’t help but lift her arms to her eyes.

But he wasn’t having any of that—“Don’t hide from me, Rey. Not like this, sweetie…”—and he pushed her arms right off. He held them up against the sides of her head and breathed kisses over her shirt, up and down her torso and under her jaw.

And then his teeth clamped over her nipple, a tight little pinch that made her cry out, but in the next moment he was soothing away the pain with his tongue and his lips, soaking through her shirt and giving the abused bud a wet apology.

And then he was dragging her shirt off. The sudden rush of cool air made her nipples pucker even more, the sensation making her gasp.

“Hold your hands here,” he said as he curled her fingers over the edge of the mattress above her head.

He settled himself into a sitting position between her legs, which entailed having his knees pressing against the outer sides of her hips, his thighs supporting hers. She was utterly exposed now, only her panties keeping him from seeing _everything_. His last instruction made it so she couldn’t hide under her arms anymore, but at least she could still close her eyes.

But doing so only made the feel of his hands sliding over her tummy and ribs all the more intense. Her skin tightened under his ministrations, pushing the tiny hairs all over her body up as if each one was reaching for him.

“Ben…” slipped out of her lips in a blissful moan.

“So soft all over, Rey… I wish I could see you better.”

She was clenching and unclenching her fingers on her sheets, and she bit her lip to hold her embarrassing cries in. He was just running his hands from her hips to the undersides of her breasts, up and down, pushing the small mounds up on every upstroke, making her nipples tingle with want of _more_ with every missed touch.

He must have heard her silent plea somehow because in the next moment he captured one peak again with his lips, and then his tongue was giving it a slick and thorough bath, and his fingers were gently pinching and rolling the other one. She wove her hands into his hair, clutching him desperately closer. Her nerves tugged a line from her nipples to her pussy, and as her inner muscles twitched, there was no holding her wails in.

“… like fucking fruit,” was what she thought his growled words were against her breast as she arched her back to give him more.

Her flooded walls were fluttering so intensely that she thought she could come just from him kissing her breasts alone, but she wasn’t about to find out as he then abandoned his suckling and licked a trail up her chest and jaw to nibble on her lower lip.

Her nipples catching on his shirt as he moved up reminded her that she was all but naked under him while he was still fully clothed.

“Ben… I need to—can you take this off?”

Her entreaty was accompanied by her hands pawing urgently at the hem of his shirt. He eagerly complied, but he must have been _too_ eager as he suddenly gasped as soon as the shirt cleared his head. She’d totally forgotten about his injury, and at the sight of his pained grimace, she sprang up.

“ _Ben!_ Oh gods—are you okay?”

But even in his discomfort, he must have enjoyed how she bounced right up as his eyes jumped to her breasts, and a stupid little smile crossed his face. The _lech_. He ran his hand up her arm as though to comfort _her_ and nodded his head.

“Yeah, just moved too fast.”

She gathered his face in her hands and gave in to the urge to kiss him in comfort. Her lips were butterflies gently landing on the beauty marks on his face, and as she came close, his eyes locked with hers for an endless second, a softness coming over them. From up close, he looked utterly irresistible when he chomped on his lips in that way he did, but he must have been thinking along the same lines because he was suddenly pushing her to her back again and kissing her hard.

Their hands flew all over each other in renewed vigor, and Rey thought she could pass out from the luscious sensation of his bare skin sliding against hers. He was satin over marble wherever she touched, his muscles rippling under her fingers. She thought she’d had a decent grasp of just how big he was standing and sitting next to him the past day, but now that her hands could barely meet behind him and he was almost crushing her with his sheer weight, it blew her mind just how _massive_ he was and pounded to mush a very primitive, very female part of her brain.

It didn’t take long for his hand to find its way to her damp underwear, and she shrieked against his lips when it made contact. Her shriek melted into moans as he palmed her, her knees knocking uselessly against his sides in an instinctive attempt to snap together. Her panties were a useless barrier as her copious wetness seeped through, his fingers tracing her shape through them.

He was mumbling obscenities against her neck when his hand moved over the waistband of her underwear. But then a thought suddenly screamed through her mind that made her hands clamp frantically over his wrist.

Ben seemed so worldly and experienced—or at least, so much more than her—and she knew after hearing Rose and Jess and Kaydel talk candidly about how painful waxing was that people seemed to have certain… expectations about how things looked like down there. She had always brushed the thought off as it had never been relevant to her, and had even been secretly relieved to know that she hadn’t had to deal with the horror that they described the experience to be.

But now she almost felt like hyperventilating in utter mortification.

Ben’s eyes rounded at her distress. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

How did one even bring this up?

“I… I don’t… I have… it’s…”

“Breathe for me, Rey. What is it?” The worry in his voice tripped her heart up even more.

“I didn’t… shave down th…”

In the next moment he was gathering her in his arms and peppering her face with kisses.

“Oh, sweetie, not everyone does! Were you seriously worried about that?”

She could feel the smile on his lips and hear it in his voice when he spoke, and it both relieved her and made her feel a little bit silly.

“Oh, Rey… Rey, you sweet, sweet thing!” He placed an open kiss on her lips and soothed her with his tongue. “Let me touch you, baby… I want to touch you so bad.”

He caressed her belly a few times before sliding his hot hand into her panties. His fingers tangled against the curls on her mound as gently as his tongue traced her lips.

“Would you think differently of me whether I have or don’t have hair on my balls?”

The bold ridiculousness of the question almost made her laugh. As if he had to ask.

But it seemed he was taking this reassurance thing too seriously, as he maintained his lazy exploration… around where she needed him to actually touch her. He kept murmuring praises on how sexy it felt to rub her rich pelt and even went so far as to part her outer lips inside her soaked panties and stroke the plump pads up and down with his fingernails, but even when she canted her hips to try to get him where she wanted, he only teased around the edges.

She whined against his lips. “Ben… please… I need your fingers.”

He groaned at that, and then he was pulling her panties off and tossing it behind him. And then he was bending over her and then he finally, _finally_ moved his hand over her weeping core. She shuddered as his thick finger slightly pushed into her swollen slit.

“Fuck, Rey… baby, you’re so wet.” His voice was hoarse and sounded just as desperate as she felt.

She was shaking so hard that she could barely shape the words as he massaged her clit with the pads of two fingers, but she needed him to know—

“You make me this way, Ben—”

With a groan, he was suddenly pushing his weight on her, pushing his teeth into her shoulder, and pushing a finger into her.

“So fucking tight, Rey—”

His digit was so much thicker and longer than hers, and her muscles clenched around the intrusion. And then he was slowly moving it in and out of her, stretching her with every push and making her walls flutter frantically at the loss with every withdrawal.

He licked the shell of her ear, and then breathed a question against it almost accusingly.  

“Did you touch yourself this morning, Rey?”

 _He knew._ He _was_ awake, and _he knew_ that she’d gotten worked up over the simple sleepy contact with him, and that she’d had to take care of it.

“Ben…”

“Did you touch yourself like this in the bathroom?”

 _He knew_ that she’d had her fingers in her, just like this, as crazy with want for him then as she was now. All day _he’d known_ that she’d desperately strummed her clitoris and wished it was him doing it.

The raggedness of his voice was a luscious contrast against the steady rhythm of his finger sawing in and out of her, distending her soaked lips, and she was getting _close_.

“Ben, please—I was thinking of _you_.”

He cried out and pressed his hard length against her thigh. His lone finger picked up speed as he started rubbing himself against her.

“How many fingers did you have inside you, Rey?” he panted against her ear.

The single syllable was almost impossible to push out. “Two.”

And then another thick finger joined the first, and then they were pistoning in and out of her, the tight squeeze making squelching noises against the lake that had formed against his hand—he was a mountain of hard heat against her—

“Did you come?”

She had no breath to spare, she was almost there, so close—“Yes— _please, Ben_ —”

And then he was mashing is wide thumb against her desperate clit, and his deep voice was resonating in the hollows of her soul—

_“Come for me, Rey.”_

And then she was flying and falling to her death with a scream, pulled apart and battered and set on fire, his fingers a stake through her unholy desires, and there was nothing but Ben all around her and inside her—

And beside her, catching his breath with her as his hand slowed down and his kisses softened.

“Good girl… such a good girl,” he murmured as he held her close and pressed his lips against her hair. She could sleep just like this, all her muscles weighed down by bliss.

But against her thigh, he was still _hard_.

She’d almost blacked out from how good it had been, but he hadn’t even come. She’d been so busy with her pleasure that she hadn’t even thought of his. Shame washed over her and tainted her bliss. He’d given her this unbelievable gift and hadn’t taken anything for himself. He didn’t even take his cock out of his pants.

Which was a _thing_.

Suddenly all she wanted was to have him in her hands. The very thought of it made her sated muscles twitch.

It was a combination of her nerves still firing off and shyness that made her hand tremble as she brought it down from his shoulder to trace a line down to his waist. But as she moved it to the front, his fingers caught hers.

“You don’t have to, Rey.”

She looked up at him, confused. She could still feel his shape pressing against her.

“But you haven’t—”

“We can stop here.” There was none of the breathlessness that had clouded Ben’s voice earlier, and in fact, he sounded even and measured to her ear.

_What was this?_

And then he was rolling away and moving to his back and covering his eyes with his arm the very same way he’d told her not to do earlier.

Just as sudden as the coolness of the air wafted over her, it hit her: _he had been feeling sorry for her_.

He had tried, at least, and even got his dick hard, but he was a man, after all, and maybe that’s just how it was—it would have been so easy to think of someone, _anyone_ else—

The happiness that had filled her just moments ago was now a river of burrs in her veins. When she’d asked him to do this, the thought that it could be a pity fuck didn’t even cross her mind. She thought there had been _something_ earlier today when he’d teased her, and tonight out on the porch, and as he held her as they tried to fall asleep, that gave her hope.

She was a fucking _fool_ to think that anyone could ever want her like this. An absolute moron to want this beautiful creature in her bed when she was _nothing, no one,_ had always been. A junkyard scavenger from the desert begging a woodland prince for sexual scraps. And now she didn’t even have her own clothes to hide herself from the truth. Tears filled her eyes too fast, and she knew she needed to get away before she humiliated herself even further.

She sprang up, but he was too big to jump over, and she tried to crawl over his legs, but she was tripping over them, and it was hard to see, hard to breathe—

And once again he was holding her in place, as if he had _any right_ —

“Rey… Rey, what’s wrong?”

She tried to shake him off, as desperately as she did yesterday when he was trying to kill her—but really, maybe now he’ll actually manage it, she was an avalanche of broken glass inside—

“Rey, are you _crying_? Did I hurt you? Tell me what’s wrong!”

_“Let go of me—”_

And then he was pulling her to him and trying to hold her close—

“Stop—Rey, will you please— _stop!_ ”

But before she died, he needed to know just how he killed her—

_“You didn’t have to do this if you didn’t want me!”_

And he had the _utter gall_ to look stricken, and then mad, as if he wasn’t the one who hurt her with his _kindness_ —

And then he was shaking her by the shoulders, making her tears fall so much faster down her cheeks.

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about, Rey?” He all but roared the question, and his eyes were spitting fire.

“I wasn’t asking for your—for your _charity!_ ”

A look of incredulity crossed his face. And then he was pushing her onto her back right on the bed—almost violently—and he was prying her knees apart with his and pressing his full weight on hers so that her breath whooshed out of her lungs—

—settling himself in the cradle of her legs and rocking his thick root against her naked center— _what the fuck was he doing?_ —and it _chafed_ —

He was squeezing her wrists so hard over her head, and he was biting her where her neck met her shoulder—hard—keeping her in place as he ground against her.

“Does this feel like I don’t want you? Fuck… you’ve been driving me crazy, Rey…”

And he was gentling his rhythm until it chafed less and ached more, and she didn’t want to feel this way again—

“I… I just wanted this to be good for you, okay?” There was something like a plea in his voice. “God… I can’t believe I have to explain it like this—”

“You don’t _have_ to explain anyth—”

“Rey, for the love of—will you _please_ , just listen for a second?”

He stilled above her. Rey looked away, and she could feel a pout dragging the muscles around her lips down, making them tremble, and she felt like a _child_.

“Shit,” he said, and he kissed her lips softly. Like he couldn’t help it. She hardened herself against his tender assault. He sighed against her and pulled back.

“Rey… I’m not—I’m not exactly… small. I mean look at me. I mean—not _there!_ Just—I’m a big guy—do you get what I’m trying to say?”

He brought one of her hands down and wrapped it around his crotch. She knew he would be… proportionate, but… _yeah_. He let out a hitching sigh at the feel of her smaller fingers over him.

“And this would have been your first time if—if we’d—I just didn’t want to hurt you, okay?”

Her eyes felt like saucers as she looked up at his. She wished they were closer to the fire so she could see the brownness of them.

“And I didn’t want you to feel like you owed it to me… just because… just because I made you come. I’m _happy_ that I made you come.”

She pulled her hand from his cock and smacked his shoulder. Hard. Because now she got it, and now she was over feeling stupid and sad and well on her way to being pissed.

“Did you just—?”

“You _idiot!_ Don’t you get it? Do I really have to spell it out for you, Benjamin Solo?”

She wasn’t sure if his eyes went wide from the sound of his full name or from her anger.

“I _needed_ you to do this. I _wanted_ to do this with you. I wanted— _I just want you,_ you… you… you muttonhead!”

She kissed him, and his lips were pliant pillows that opened right up over hers.

“Do I really need to beg you, Ben? Because I can—I can do that.” She took a shuddering breath and moved her hot core against him and captured one of his _adorable_ ears with her teeth to make sure he didn’t miss a single word. “ _Please,_ Ben, I need your—I need your cock inside me… Make me feel good again… Please… I need you to fuck me—”

He cut her off with a rough kiss that lasted an eternity, and then he was nipping at her jaw and her sweaty neck with desperate bites and moving down to suck her tits _hard_ —so sharp and so wet her back arched right off the bed and she howled—and then he was kicking the rest of his clothes off and feeling around the bed frantically for _something_ , and he was tearing foil open and rolling the rubber which was now _very much her business_ over his turgid length—

And her thighs were stretched open, so wide open because she _couldn’t wait_ , she was quivering, and she told him to “Hurry, please, Ben—I need you—” and he was sticking two fingers into her mouth and sweeping the drool off her tongue, and there was barely any time to give them a nibble because he was pushing them into her pussy and pulling them apart inside her that she _gasped_ at being stretched so open—

And then he was burying his face in _all that mess_ and making her scream—but he wouldn’t let her pull him off, not with her fingers tugging at his hair, because he was too busy sucking on her clit like it was some kind of dam release button—

“Taste so fucking good… Do you know what this does to me, Rey? That I’m the only guy that’s ever had the flavor of your pussy on his tongue?”

And she was climbing, climbing, his thick fingers pumping into her like they were some kind of lever and she was moving up, up, up on her mechanical platform, ready to jump off again—and she was _almost there!_ —

But he pulled his fingers out and wrapped them and her slick around his sheathed cock, and he moved over her and rubbed himself on her opening where there was even more of her honey—

“—need you as wet as I can make you, sweetie—”

She made to grab him because he was taking _forever_ , but he wasn’t having it because he had to know first—

“Are you sure, Rey? Are you very sure?”

“Yes, Ben, I’m sure! Will you just—put it in alrea— _ooh_ …”

He eased his entry with flicks of his thumb on her bud, and she was so ripe for him that as soon as the first inch or two slipped inside, she came with a wail. He froze over her but didn’t let up on the motion of his finger on her clitoris to prolong her ecstasy. He was shaking above her with the effort, covered in sweat, not even risking kissing her back as she moaned against his lips, not even bothering to tell her to stop moving, just letting her take her pleasure.

She could feel the flutters easing up, and it felt so tight even with barely just the head of his cock in her. But his shoulders and his thighs were so tense over her, that even as she raked her nails over them gently and caressed him with the insides of her own thighs, he was like a rock.

“Ben… Ben… come inside me, please… you made me feel so good.”

Slowly he released his breath, and the tension in his muscles, and just let gravity pull him into her. There was just _so much of him_. She murmured his name against his temple and heaped praises on his manhood—he had to _know_ just how impressive it was—and tried not to visibly flinch at the pressure. He had been so good to her—and even now he was being so considerate of her comfort—but she needed him to take his pleasure too and share in her euphoria.

So she wrapped her legs around him, making him gasp and pushing tears out of her eyes, and then she was telling him that it was okay to move—and so he did, and it didn’t feel impossible after a while. And she knew it was good for him because he was keening her name against her ear, just a ragged little refrain, his jaw rough against hers, as he picked up his pace. And he was hitting places inside her now, and it was _different_ , and if she hadn’t been so blissed out already she thought she could have come again.

She held him as he fell apart, and felt the pieces of him crashing everywhere they touched.

And she wished she could forever commit to memory the sweetness of his bliss.

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I debated whether or not to add a pre-chapter reminder note that this thing will have smut, but then it's all up in the tags already. And here we have it, and all I'm hoping for now is that the tone of it stayed true to the earlier chapters. But really, if you think it's too much, feel free to tell me. :P 
> 
> Our heroes have this very reliable ability to almost always ruin things for themselves. Horrible for them, but I guess good for the plot? heh
> 
> Thank you once again for reading, and I hope I haven't chased you all away for good! And remember: it's not all rainbows and butterflies quite yet!


	8. Chapter 8

*******

 

Not three weeks after she came to Chandrila, Rey was invited to her first ever birthday party. Her first ever _party_ , period. She was beyond excited, and even more nervous, not knowing what to expect.

Han, her new boss, had been grumpier than usual all day at work, and as the clock ticked closer to closing time he got even more so, which didn’t do anything to settle her nerves because that seemed to be a weird state to be in on your own birthday, especially when a party was about to be held in your honor.

But she found out later that that was simply his own way of expressing nervous excitement, and as soon as he and Leia arrived at Maz’s pub and he got showered with exuberant greetings, awkward hugs and hearty back slaps, the grin that broke across his face was the kind that crinkled his eyes till you almost couldn’t see them if it wasn’t for how much they twinkled, and through that grin slipped happy swearing in lieu of thank-yous.

That warm July night, she’d been utterly overwhelmed by the number of people and the sheer joy that filled the place. And when she slipped out for a second to wipe at the moisture on her eyes, she told herself that it was from how bright Maz’s pretty silver streamers had been.

But she couldn’t really stay away for too long—firstly because she didn’t actually want to stay out, and more importantly because Finn found her shortly thereafter and dragged her back inside for Chewie’s barbecued ribs.

Booze and food and friendship and laughter—so much of it all at once, and so much of it so new to her. That night, when she got home with Rose, she fell straight into a blissful sleep, just so full of all those good things and wrapped up in a blanket of happiness.

It wasn’t so different from how she felt right now.

Even after Ben got up to go to the bathroom—those pale white buns rolling as he walked, _fuck_ —Rey felt weighed down on the bed by his scent all around her, the flavor of his lingering kiss, the memory of the soft heat in his eyes and the phantom feel of his heavy body on top of hers. She wanted to just sink down into sleep in this perfect state of satiety, with the aftershocks of his… _loving_ still rippling through her. Just the very thought made her bite her lip and moan into the back of her hand.

And it made her unaccountably bashful—so much so that even after hearing him come out of the bathroom, pad across the space and actually sit on the bed next to her, she kept her eyes squeezed shut. When he placed a hand on her knee—it wasn’t even a caress, just a gentle touch to call her attention, gods—she felt her face burn.

“Rey,” he said when she didn’t acknowledge him with more than a barely audible gasp, “Earlier, I should have… you should know—”

He cleared his throat, as if whatever he was about to say needed absolutely no obstructions to be able to get through. She had to look at him at that. And try hard to keep her eyes on his face and not make them wander over the rest of his completely naked marble-god body.

“I should have told you before I… you know—before we did it… that I’m clean.”

“Clean.” She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. And it must have shown on her face, because he continued.

“Yeah. I… don’t really do this often—just haven’t got the time, or… you know—” he ran his hand through his hair distractedly “—but I did get tested after the last time. I should have told you that earlier.”

She sat up, only now just getting it. And then she started panicking a little because she’d never gotten any of that done—she wasn’t even sure if she was supposed to. Was she? She could only nod her head.

She suddenly wished she’d at least skimmed through those magazines at the convenience store the way Jess sometimes did when they met up for lunch or after work. But the titles always seemed so ridiculously lurid, and the girls _would_ tease. But at least if she had then she wouldn’t be feeling so damned clueless right now.

“So… uh… do you want to use the bathroom? I left the candle lit for you.”

She just mumbled a yes and tottered off. With each step, her muscles reminded her of how they’d been put to use, and just how thoroughly. Upon closer inspection by the candle light, she realized she hadn’t bled and was grateful it hadn’t been as bad as she thought it was going to be. If there was one thing she knew, it was that she’d been very lucky. Ben’s consideration made her ache in an entirely different place, right around the middle of her chest.

As she stood under the water, it crossed her mind that she was washing his scent off of her skin, and it made her feel a little resentful.

She decided she’ll just have to _replenish_ after this.

The very thought of cuddling with Ben made her stupidly giddy, and with that happy thought she dried off and wrapped the towel around herself.

His heavy-lidded gaze and half-smile as she floated back to where he was once again settled under her blanket made her wonder if he was thinking along those same lines. When she dropped her towel, she only had a second to appreciate how his mouth fell open before she shyly dove under the covers with him.

She told her body that it was time to _sleep_ and to not get any more ideas as he pulled her close.

“Good night, Ben.” Her cheeks hurt from smiling as she nuzzled his chest.

“Good night, Rey.” His voice was as velvet as his lips on top of her head.

And the last thought that danced through her mind before she drifted off was how this wasn’t such a terrible thing to get used to.

 

*******

 

Rey couldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming about, but it must have had something to do with boats, because as she slowly came to, it felt as if she was riding gently lapping waves.

And then she realized that the world _was_ actually shaking. The first thing that crossed her mind was _earthquake!_ and that sent a lance of pure panic straight through her heart and snapped her eyes wide open. It was almost completely dark—the fire must have burnt out.

But then she registered the heat of Ben’s arm squeezing her torso, his fingers digging into her skin, and his harsh breathing bubbling out from his lips right behind her ear.

And the not-so-foreign hardness pressing urgently against her bottom as he rocked against her.

When she realized what was happening, his name spilled brokenly from her lips.

_“Ben.”_

Upon discovering that she’d woken up, his hand made its way down her clenching tummy, pushed itself between her thighs and cupped right over her core, where it proceeded to shakily rub circles over her awakening clit in rhythm with his rocking. Her body was only too eager to help, and soon she was drenching his fingers, getting primed to receive.

“ _Rey…_ want you again—I need to fuck you so bad.”

She needed exactly that just as much and just as _right now_.

“Ohhh, Ben—”

She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to help other than to spread her thighs wide open, her leg going up in the air. She turned her head to kiss him, and he swallowed her little mewling cries.

“Fuck, so wet for me already…”

Electrifyingly instant was what it was, like her body had perfectly latched on to its memory of the _rightness_ of having him earlier and brought her to that same ready state right away. And in the darkness, it became all about the feel and the sound and the scent of him wrapped around her.

“Ben, please—need you inside me—”

He groaned at her breathless words and just pressed against her with legs, arms, lips and cock—but then he wasn’t moving anymore, other than to shudder, until he felt like one tortured wall of pure contracted muscle—

“I can’t—we can’t, Rey… _shit_ … we don’t have any more—”

And then he was breathing against her so raggedly, in pure agony—and she realized why—

_One condom._

She suddenly wanted to cry. She could feel how much Ben needed this, and remembered how much he held himself back earlier for her. She just wanted him to feel _good_. It was an overwhelming urge that made her want to just grab his cock and push it in anyway, give him sweet relief, but… no. And then her eyes _were_ watering at the intense disappointment, and the back of her nose stung.

“No, baby, _no_ —sweetie, don’t cry—”

“Ben… I just wanted to make you feel good.”

“Ohhh, Rey, you do— _you do!_ You have no idea—shh… shh…”

Before she could dissolve into actual tears, his fingers plunged into her. If he’d meant that as a distraction, he was very successful, as straightaway it knocked the air out of her lungs. He pushed and pulled at places inside her that made her hips chase his fingers as they moved. His moans as she squirmed against him seasoned his kisses and made not just her mouth salivate for him.

“Sweet girl… nice, sweet pussy just wants to give my cock a hug, huh? This will have to do for now, baby. But you have to help me—”

“Anything, Ben… tell me what to do—”

And then he was drawing his fingers out and spreading her generous slick all across the insides of her thighs—

“Squeeze your legs together, sweetie.”

She didn’t know what he was planning, and he surprised her by pushing his cock against the walls of her inner thighs. He pumped himself a few times into the tight space, and she could feel his own hard thighs flexing with every contraction, a hot cushion behind hers.

And then he was working his fingers back into her pussy—in and out and in and out—as he took his own pleasure between her thighs, his tempo not quite perfect but still managing to melt her brain.

“I can’t fuck you right now, Rey, but you feel so good just like this. Is this okay?”

It was _very_ okay, and he damn well knew it. She could only gurgle her “uh-huhs” at him—she was incapable of anything more coherent.

He sped up the motion of his fingers, the steady beat the steps with which she moved up—each stroke pounding her clit into submission. And she was climbing higher, higher—and his hand sung an obscene psalm as it squelched against her distended flesh—

And she was once again pushed over the precipice of pleasure-pain, and there was nothing else to focus on but his fingers in her clenching core and the way his name spilled so perfectly from her lips. She shook hard in his arms while his hand gentled as it brought her down.

“So good, sweetie… you don’t know what it does to me when you fall apart like that for me.”

He was still rocking himself between her thighs, his hand pawing urgently at her hips, and when she squeezed her knees together, aftershocks of pleasure shot through her center. She brought her hand down to give the head of his cock something to push against, and he must have liked that because he let out a delicious wail. It only felt natural to spread her fingers over him as he moved.

She knew he was getting close from how frenzied his movements were becoming, and the bed creaked as he hammered away at her. Her spent pussy quaked at the thought of receiving such a pounding.

“I want you to come for me, Ben... can you come for me?”

“Fuck, _Reyyy_ …”

She gently squeezed the head of his cock—was she even doing this right?—and she must have been because in a loud, violent flurry, he spurted against her fingers. For many long moments he just writhed and grunted behind her, like she’d been a live wire and his body could do nothing but ride out the shock of it all.

She ran her hands up and down his arms and cushioned his trembling lips with her own until he fell limp against her.

She’d been wrong earlier. She hadn’t died and slipped off into limbo. Right now, she was absolutely certain that this was what _heaven_ must feel like. And she couldn’t stop the little sliver of truth from spilling from her lips.

“You’re so beautiful, Ben.”

He only huffed against her ear and held her tighter.

She must have dozed off for a few minutes, and even when she felt him pulling away from her she couldn’t lift her eyelids. In that sticky state of not-quite-consciousness, she heard a thunking sound, and then shortly, what seemed to be the crackling of the fire, which apparently he’d brought back to life.

And then he was moving his fingers and his lips over her face.

“Rey.” Her name had never sounded more tender. “We need to clean you up.”

He was trying to pull her up into a sitting position, but her body was having none of that. Silly man.

“So sleepy, Ben,” she whined. “Later.”

“Sweetie, unless you’re ready to have my baby, we need to do this now.”

That worked. Her eyes were suddenly wide open.

 “I… uh… spilled all over you. Just want to make sure, Rey.” His eyes were chocolate saucers in the firelight.

But he hadn’t been… _inside_ her. Her confusion must have shown on her face.

“It is possible. It has happened.”

_Huh._

She slipped her hands over his shoulders just because they looked so irresistibly solid and so beautifully pale in the soft light, but for some reason he took that as a signal to lift her in his arms. She gasped and squeezed her arms around him at the sensation of weightlessness. Never in her living memory had she ever been airborne this way, and it was… something. She wasn’t a tiny girl, but he certainly made her feel like one. Yet again.

The candle in the bathroom was already lit, and he gently set her down in the shower. Only then did she notice that he was wearing the towel she’d discarded earlier. And then his _bandage_. She made him carry her like that with his injury.

But when she sought his eyes out, there was no hint of pain there, just a tranquil evenness, and even the trace of a smile on his mouth as he set about washing off the evidence of his earlier ecstasy as well as he could with the shower curtain half-separating them—why was _he_ doing this? But she let him, and she had to bite her lip and clench her hand on his shoulder at the sensation of his hands running all over her wet body. And when he noticed, he chuckled.

“No, Rey. That would defeat the purpose of this shower.”

“Uh-huh,” she said stupidly.

At the sound of that something in her voice, he stopped and kissed her, his tongue swiping softly between her lips, and his hand brushed even more softly against the ones farther down.

But he was firm with his reiterated “No,” and he resumed washing her with a placid efficiency. _Tease._

But that was perfectly fine with Rey, especially since she got to watch him grinning the whole time, and to even steal tiny kisses of her own.

And then they were bedding down again, and she slipped back into a blissful sleep in his arms.

 

*******

 

There was something very wrong with the world when Rey woke up.

The first thing that hinted at this was the brightness that pressed against her eyelids as she slowly slid them open. Light was spilling through the window next to her almost as if it deliberately meant to give offense, and when she looked across the room, the bathroom door was open and the light in there was _on_.

The next clue was the total silent stillness. As if everything had tired so completely of being pushed around by the storm the last few days and just decided to stop moving altogether. Was it even still raining last night? She couldn’t remember.

And Ben was nowhere to be seen.

She sat up as dread filled her. She had known the moment would come—she wasn’t a fool to actually think he’d stay—but she didn’t think she would be this unprepared for it.

The front door was open.

The sight of her clothes from last night folded neatly on the coffee table felt perversely foreign to what the past two days had been like. Clinical in the crispness of their edges. Things put away after play. He’d done that. Even the shirt she’d lent him. With shaking hands she put hers on, and on even shakier legs she walked to the door.

The relief that hit her when she saw him standing barefoot and shirtless on the porch made her slump against the doorway.

_He hadn’t left._

But when she called out a “Hey, Ben,” he shifted at the sound but didn’t turn around.

“Hey,” was all he said back, and there was a wall around the single word.

Her heart lurched. He was still here. But he was already a hundred miles away.

She wanted to put her hands on him. Hold him here as long as she can. But instead she tried for a casual tone.

“Looks like the storm’s over.”

“Mm.”

The urge to talk was overwhelming, to just speak louder and faster than how the world was destroying the bubble and reshaping itself to the reality of _before_. Or was it _after?_

She wasn’t going to talk about probably needing to go back to work today.

She wasn’t going to ask him about where he’ll go.

She opened her mouth and spoke of something safe.

“Do you want breakfast? We still have eggs.”

“I’m not really very hungry right now.”

The walls were coming down too fast. The cataclysm shook everything inside her until she could feel a physical pain in her midsection. Churning acid that melted flesh and crawled up her throat. Or was that just hunger? She wasn’t quite sure.

She wished he would look at her.

“Should we change your bandage?” She didn’t think her voice shook too much.

“All right,” he answered, and then he walked right past her and back into the cottage. Without looking at her once. Her eyes furiously blinked back moisture. It was just so _bright_.

_Acid slowly spreading._

Last night had been a revelation, she’d thought. Last night, it was as if he’d held up a mirror to her and she’d looked at herself and seen someone different, someone new. Someone who could move forward as a beautiful possibility. But now, under the brightness of day, it was clear that it all might as well have been a trick of the firelight. The person who’d stared back was changed, all right, but only as far as the shadows could shift the illusion.

She couldn’t blame him for it entirely. He’d only made her see, but the fantasy was all her own making. She was the one who stepped up and looked, after all.

She’d always thought her kitchenette was a warm space, with its worn wood surfaces and the green curtains Rose’s mom made just for her cheering her up every morning as she stood by it to eat whatever quick breakfast she’d made for herself.

But there was nothing warm about the tableau that met her eyes. Ben stood by the sink, the bright red first-aid kit open next to him, as his fingers peeled the edges of the bandage delicately in much the same way they tried that very first time. Just with a lot less visible pain. He’d turned on the overhead light, and his face was cold under the stark illumination. The aspect of determination to get this over with as quickly as possible.

She shuffled closer to him, even with the certainty that he wouldn’t welcome her help this time around. But this was probably the last time she’d be able to do this for him, and so with shaking hands, she brushed his fingers off.

“Let me do that.”

He let her, after all.

She looked at the deep gash that carved a straight line across his side. Too close to his ribs. It hadn’t festered, thankfully, but it was still horrible to look at, angry and red and shiny, especially now, under this too-white light.

“You should have gotten stitches.”

“It wasn’t an option at the time.”

She had an idea of just what did it, but she wanted to know for sure. Even if she had to deal the last blow to her crumbling bubble.

There was no escaping reality now.

“What did this, Ben?”

He was silent for a long time, that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally, a single word pushed its way past his working throat.

“Gunshot.”

She was right. But the confirmation made her stomach roil even more and made her eyes sting.

“And it wasn’t an accident?”

“No.”

Someone had wanted him dead. He’d told her as much when he… came here, and she’d believed him then, but now, after _everything_ …

If that bullet had found its mark, he wouldn’t be standing here before her now. She wouldn’t have given a thought to his existence, other than those rare times when the memory of Poe’s tale would rise to the surface of her mind. He would have been a footnote in her relationship with Han and Leia, something to wonder about in passing. They would have mourned his death in secret, and she would never have known why they’d become so broken.

She would have ridden out the storm of the last two days in familiar isolation, eating Maz’s sandwiches and sausages by herself, sitting by her fire doing absolutely nothing, being absolutely nothing. She would have stepped back into the rhythm of her life, the peace of having friends and work.

The very thought of not having had Ben—however little time she’d had with him, however much of a fantasy it all was—pushed tears from her eyes.

And he was aware of them, she knew. But even as her fingers shook and she sniffled, he didn’t say anything. Stayed absolutely still and silent as she patched him up.

“What happened to you, Ben?”

A long silence, and then—

“I saw something I wasn’t supposed to.”

“And… whoever did this… you think they’ll still come after you?”

The bandage had been replaced, but she couldn’t bear to pull her hands away from him. They settled on the waistband of his pants.

“They’re not the kind of person who accepts failure, not even their own.”

She shook her head vehemently against his shoulder, as if that alone could banish the threat of his words. She was weeping fully now, no longer bothering to keep her hitching breaths quiet.

“No. No. Let me help you, Ben. Please. Whatever it is I can do—”

“You can’t help me.” His voice was strangled as he pulled away from her.

“Then let—let Han and Leia help you,” she wailed. “They have resources. Leia’s got connections.”

He laughed. It was a bitter, tremulous sound.

“Oh, they’ll love this. Little black sheep come bleating back to mommy and daddy when things get a little too rowdy outside the fence. This will be so sweet.”

He was still half-laughing, half-choking, and the ugliness of it grated on her.

“Give your parents more credit, Ben. That was all a long time ago.”

“And things have changed, right?” He was now visibly shaking, his hand pushing into his hair roughly. “Han won’t leave because he can’t deal and Leia won’t try to _fix_ me kind of thing? I guess they can’t exactly sic me on Luke if he doesn’t have his school anymore, huh?”

So he didn’t have the best relationship with his parents. But he didn’t even want to _try_ , and his words and the way he said them made her own temper spike.

“Then why are you here? Why come back to Chandrila? Why come back to your parents’ place?”

“I don’t know, okay?” he exploded. “ _I don’t know!_ I… I fucking freaked out—thought I was gonna die. I obviously wasn’t _thinking_ —”

“But you’re here _now_. Let them help. It isn’t too late. Whatever happened in the past, it can be mended—I’m sure it’s already been forgiven. They _will_ want to hel—”

“What did you say to me?” His voice was dangerously low, and suddenly, she had his complete attention. But this wasn’t how she’d wanted to get it.

What _had_ she said? She could only look at him, at how his eyes were sharpening in true anger, the panic draining out of them.

“ _Forgiven?_ Do you really think that I’m here to beg Han Solo and Leia Organa for forgiveness?”

It was a terrible mistake to say it, she was realizing now. His hackles were rising—his shoulders tightening, and his fists closing in on themselves, getting ready for violence. Not against _her_ , she knew, but the words she’d spoken.

“Is that what they told you?” he continued in that awful quiet voice. “Leia give you her sad little tale about the bad son that almost ruined her ambitions, did she? Or was it Han and how ashamed he is that his kid wasn’t more cool like him?”

“It wasn’t—they never said anyth—”

“The princess and the war hero, out to save the world from all its ills—” his voice was rising, his breath bellowing out of his lungs “—let’s all get on our knees and worship them as they only deserve—”

“They aren’t like that! They’ve been nothing but good to everyone I know! They’ve been nothing but good to _me!_ ”

“Well, isn’t that just nice? Gave you a job, gave you this little… _hovel_ , saved you from your sad little life, and you just lap it all up and come crawling like a loyal little dog… yeah, that’s the Leia effect for you, all right!”

He didn’t. _He didn’t_ —

“ _How dare you!_ ” she shrieked. “You ungrateful son of a bitch! You had _everything_!”

“Everything!” he screamed right back. “Yeah, I had fucking _everything_ my mother’s money and my father’s fame could buy! All the… vacations and the cars and the house help I _never_ wanted! And _friends!_ Who would lack for friends if you’ve got your parents’ _fans_ everywhere! Fucking hand-me-down friends, can you believe it?”

In his rage, he gesticulated wildly and slammed his fist on the counter. And on the wall cabinet, which let out a horrible cracking sound and rattled everything inside it. But she was too angry to be afraid. And still he went on—

“ _Everything,_ huh? I was nothing! And they made that clear every fucking day of my life that I was absolutely nothing without Leia Organa or Han Solo! Not worth anyone’s time, not even my precious parents who made time for everybody else but their own stupid son! So fucking worthless that they thought it was perfectly fine to just hand me off to Luke like his… like his hippie bullshit can make everything better!”

He was breathing hard over his tears, and her heart cracked at the sight of them on his cheeks, but—

“But you had them! It wasn’t perfect but _you had them with you!_ You had so much!”

He swept his hand over the counter, and the force of it sent the open first-aid kit flying—rolls of gauze and band-aids and plastic bottles of antiseptic spilling out like nightmare confetti—across the room.

“Shut the fuck up! Just because your own family _abandoned you_ doesn’t give you the right to judge me when you know nothing of what I’ve been through, you self-righteous witch!”

Her open hand flew out and landed hard on his jaw, and the sound was like a gunshot.

“Get out. _Out!_ ” she screamed.

This was not her Ben. Her Ben had careful hands and soft eyes and gentle endearments for her. _This_ was the monster that didn’t know anything other than to take and inflict pain. No, not her Ben, not even when he looked at her with his shocked, wide Leia-eyes. As if she’d hurt him deeply. Or that he’d suddenly realized what he’d done. _How dare he._

“You think you have some… some sort of monopoly on pain. You think that makes it perfectly okay for you to just… hurt everyone back. I know I’m just… some stupid girl from the desert for you, but I won’t have you hurting me like this, not when—not when I just wanted you to f…”

_Not when I just wanted you to feel better._

But she couldn’t tell him that now. He’d given up without even trying, that much was clear.

This was as far as they went.

And she couldn’t stand the thought. So she ran. Out of her own house. Away from his eyes. Away from his everything.

At least she wouldn’t have to see him go. No one was leaving her this time. Maybe this was better.

He might have called out. She wasn’t sure, not over her hiccupping, burning breaths. But it didn’t matter.

She was barely aware of where she was going as her naked soles pounded over the road, as hard and as fast as she could make them. As long as it was _away_. She somehow managed to dodge twigs and the bigger branches that the cyclone had knocked down. Or maybe she wasn’t that successful, but it didn’t matter.

Her feet took her to Leia’s garden, where the water and the wind had snapped off all the flowers. There was nothing but ravaged headless shrubs, leaves spilt green blood over the ground—so bright, so recently alive. She retched, but nothing came up.

In a haze, she stumbled up to the side door. But of course she didn’t have the key with her. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but to slump down on the stoop and howl. At least there was no one to listen, no one to see.

Time moved in that dream-like way it sometimes did, where it stuttered one moment and galloped the next. The trees around her, though they were utterly still, danced a little through the kaleidoscope lenses of her tears and sometimes took on the shape of dark shadows that vaguely resembled things on the surface of her mind.

She ached everywhere. In every dimension of her being. She never wanted to move again—maybe the trees had the right idea of it, just rooted where they were planted, not having to worry about where to go or how to escape, living and dying where they stood—not even to check if the bottom of her feet were bleeding as she suspected they did. Leia’s first-aid kit sailed through the air in her mind’s eye in its blood red swath, spilling its guts out in slow motion.

Eventually she did run out of tears. She didn’t know how long it took, but the sun was high overhead. It barely peeked behind remnant clouds, but somehow it judged her even more harshly than it used to back in Jakku—nowhere to hide from the light of the truth—as she trudged back to the cottage, where absolutely nothing waited for her. It was easy to ignore the pain on her feet.

Her door was closed but not locked. She pushed it open, and the last impossible droplet of hope fizzled, overwhelmed by the welcome of the emptiness.

She was home.

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contracted a bit of writing fatigue on this, sorry. Here comes the requisite angst. Ben’s got quite the nasty streak when cornered. 
> 
> Also—and more importantly—I want to make it clear that the title of and the themes in this fic are in no way meant to trivialize the circumstances of people who have had and who, by virtue of their geographical location, continue to suffer through hurricanes, typhoons and other natural calamities. I hope everyone was safe and that losses were minimal. 
> 
> Thank you once again for reading.


	9. Chapter 9

*******

 

Rey decided to go to work.

It was close to noon, and now that her emotions had settled into a tired lump at the pit of her soul, she was starting to really feel the bottom of her feet. She’d left all the lights off, and the fire was long dead, and though she would like nothing better than to just sleep the rest of the day away—the week, the month, the rest of her life—sprawled unmoving on the floor, she didn’t want to risk having Finn or Chewie come by and seeing her in such a pathetic state. She hadn’t communicated with any of them since the other day, and they must be worried sick.

She wouldn’t know what to tell them if they saw her like this. She didn’t even have the energy to process how that conversation could possibly go. Really, it would be much simpler to just show up at the garage and get her head under a hood. Run on autopilot. She knew there was no escaping the black hole right now, but at least then she could feel sorry for herself and be useful at the same time. And not worry anyone.  

Every part of her body protested having to get off her ass, but off her ass she got, hauling herself right into her shower, where she was surprised to find that even wrung out like this, she was still capable of feeling a sliver of gratitude that the water was hot again.

The bottles of antiseptic and packages of gauze were tucked neatly in the first-aid kit when she got home earlier, and no one would have been able to tell that they’d very recently been the recipient of violence had it not been for the crack that the plastic case now prominently sported across its lid.

In fact, a casual observer would have noted that everything in the cottage was immaculately in place—her blanket folded into a precise orange rectangle on the bed, the remaining chunks of wood by the small fireplace stacked neatly, her blackened saucepan and skillet side by side on the counter—but it was exactly all these things that reminded Rey of just who had put them in such perfect order, the very same person responsible for the chaos inside her now.

The past two days had made her somewhat proficient in cleaning up and bandaging scratches and wounds, she thought, and if the images of an angry red gash across a broad purple and yellow field and pink comet trails over a constellation of dark stars on a pale sky with binary brown suns kept flashing across her mind as she patched her feet up, she just let them.

She toed her phone battery out of its muddy grave when she found it. There was no saving it. _Like so many things in this world,_ her brain couldn’t help adding. She’d be lucky to find a replacement for it—it had been her first ever smartphone. But she decided she’d worry about it later.

On the way to the shop, she steeled herself for Chewie’s worried mothering. She would have to brave his concern with as much reassurance as she can muster, and not show any sign that she’d had to endure so much more than the bad weather.

But when she got there, she found it wasn’t necessary after all.

“Hey, Rey.” Rook, another mechanic at the garage, greeted her from under one of the occupied hydraulic lifts, his demeanor even more jittery than usual. “Chewie’s in a state—been asking about you all morning.” He thumbed in the direction of Han’s office, and right on cue, the walking wall of hair strode out its door.

As soon as Chewie spotted her, he growled, more annoyed boss than worried mother. “You’re late. You couldn’t be bothered to turn your phone back on? Power was restored at dawn.”

She flinched at his uncharacteristic temper and somehow managed, “I—my phone took a dive. It’s out cold. Sorry, Chewie.”

Chewie’s eyes went a little less narrow. “I got you on a flooded Batala Avva first thing, then a possible ECU issue on that Cobalt Hammer right there. Get on it, please. We’ve got more coming in after that storm.”

“Okay, Chewie,” she said meekly. “But… can I make a phone call first?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” he replied distractedly, looking at the clipboard he was holding, and then walked off muttering something about morons who drove small cars into flooded streets.

She needed to call Rose and tell her she was okay. Han’s office cocooned her in quiet as soon as she closed the door behind her. He forbade his mechanics to smoke in the work area, but he himself would sometimes light a cigar in his glass-enclosed office. The smell of tobacco which pervaded the room made her miss his gruff presence, and that poked at the fragile dam she’d built around her tears.

She had to go through the main Resistance office line as she didn’t have Rose’s number memorized. Even just Rose’s bright voice felt like a warm hug, and the dam shook even more.

“Rey-Rey! What happened to you? I’ve missed you, dorkling! I’ve been trying to ring you all morning but it isn’t connecting. Why are you calling over the office phone?”

“Heya, Rosie—missed you too. Yeah, sorry about that. My… my phone took a shower.” She tagged on a forced chuckle at the end of that statement. She felt bad about having to lie to Rose, but she guessed she was sticking with the phone-got-wet story now.

“What? No! Is it totally broken?”

“Deader than that shrivelled dick-tus you insist on keeping on the kitchen window.”

Rose cackled. “Very funny. But my _succulent_ is not dead, thank you very much. Just got a bit… thirsty for a while. It’s in recovery. Sorry about your phone, though.”

“Guess it’s high time I replaced it,” she sighed. “It would have gone any time, anyway.”

“You’ve had it for what, three years? Four?”

“Yeah, four. Got it when I came here, remember? Anyway, I was just calling to… let you know I’m okay.”

“Hmm…” The drawn-out sound made her certain that if Rose was in front of her right now, her friend’s eyes would be narrowed at her, trying to read into what she just said. “You sounded funny in your last message.”

“Huh? What did I say?” The last thing she remembered talking with Rose over text the night before the storm hit was about the unbelievable list of finalists the cook-off show they both watched ended up with. They’d agreed that it was unfair, but nothing in that conversation had been unusual for them.

“Something about… wait, let me get it up… here—” and she proceeded to read in a stuttering monotone “— _‘Hey Rose. Lost power. Phone battery dying. Will text ASAP. Don’t worry.’_ ”

The message didn’t sound anything like her. She would remember saying something like that. She was about to say so, but then Rose continued with a chuckle.

“It was like you’d been taken over by some kind of… robot AI kind of thing. What was that?”

Her phone _had_ been taken over, she suddenly remembered. Right before her battery was tossed out.

“Oh, that! I might have had a few shots of that vodka you gave me. Ha ha!” The laughter and the lies were getting easier to choke out.

 _“Reyyy.”_ The censure in her friend’s voice was clear. “I dunno about drinking on your own. And not when you can’t get in touch with anyone like that.”

“I didn’t have too much, don’t worry.”

“‘ _Don’t. Worry._ ’” It was in that nasal monotone again, and this time the laughter was real.

But then she heard Chewie roaring at someone. Probably Rook.

“Oops, Rose, I gotta go, though. Chewie’s in a mood and I was so late today. I think Rook might’ve just pissed his pants.”

“Oh! Okay. I can drop by later after work, if you want.”

“Let’s just see. I can call you again or what. Anyway, gotta run! Tell Finn I said hi!”

Talking with Rose was like a balm that went a long way into soothing her soul as she worked and reminded her that however much had happened over the last two days, there was always Finn and Rose by her side. That they got her back, even if they had no idea how bad things got. Her hands moved by rote under the hood of the first car, and the mechanical repetition by itself made it easier to forget… things.

Or so she told herself, until she had to clean the corrosion off of the electrical connectors under the dash, and she found herself thinking of how great it would be if the taint in a person’s soul could be just as cleanly sprayed off with some magic formula in a can, and then things would be working perfectly again—at which point she promptly burst into tears.

Some things might just be impossible to fix.

She thought she wasn’t being loud halfway inside the car, partially concealed by the door, but then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“You’ll rust those pins with all that salt water,” Chewie gently joked, “and then I’d have to dock that from your pay.”

She dabbed at her eyes. “Hey, Chewie.”

There was a remorseful look in his. “Listen, Rey, I’m sorry I was short with you earlier. Just—it’s been a long morning, and I hadn’t heard from you.” _I’d been worried about you_ went unsaid, but it was right there on his face.

“Oh, no, no—I think I just caught a cold, is what. Got caught in the rain.” A tremulous laugh bubbled out of her throat.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yessir.” She executed a silly salute.

“Come to the pub tomorrow evening after work. Your elbows are getting bony again. You know Maz will have something to say about that.”

She smiled. “Storm yesterday give you x-ray vision, boss?” She wriggled her elbows, which were completely covered by thick sleeves which were once a much brighter shade of blue.

She told him she’d think about his offer, and then asked him to thank Maz for the food she sent the last time. And when he walked off, the smile on her face only dimmed a little bit.

 

*******

 

The rest of the day passed in a blur. As she was clocking out, her eyes landed on the computer that sat inside Han’s office. The thought crossed her mind that she could look up… things.

_Was he okay? Was he safe?_

The acidic knot in her belly tightened and pushed what little food she’d managed to swallow earlier up. She took a few deep breaths and convinced the lump to settle back down.

But Chewie had already locked the office door, so using the computer was out of the question. She didn’t know if she should feel relieved over that.

She’d also forgotten to call Rose again. Suddenly she didn’t want to be home alone tonight. She couldn’t possibly sleep in her bed. Not after everything that… happened on it. Unless Rose and Finn had plans, she was sure they’d be okay with her staying the night as she sometimes did ever since she moved out. She rode over the two blocks to the Resistance office, hoping she could still catch them there even though they usually left work thirty minutes before she did. But they’d already gone.

The ten-minute ride to the apartment was lovely under the awakening stars. And before she could even say hello to Rose when she opened her door, she was being dragged to the sofa.

“Were you expecting me?” she laughed. Rose was already in her PJ bottoms and an old shirt.

“Kaydel texted me a few minutes ago, said you’d dropped by. Now shush, you’ve already missed the cooking part. Wilhuff’s about to make someone cry now, and I’m hoping it’s Orson. You didn’t see how he messed with Lyra’s croutons earlier. He is such an asshole.” The last bit was accompanied by outraged head shaking.

“Where’s Finn?” she asked as they settled in front of the TV.

“He’s getting stuff for spaghetti. You good with that?”

She reassured Rose that she was, and she let her friend’s animated voice wash over her as she narrated just what the terrible Orson did. But the words and the exciting things happening on screen all blended together in a haze after a while.

_Was his bandage clean? Had he eaten?_

“Yoohoo, Rey. Still with me?”

That snapped her out of her stupor. “Sorry, yeah. Hey, Rose.”

“Hm?”

“Is it okay if… if I stay the night?”

Her expression must have been strained as Rose’s gaze drilled right into hers. And then there was a warm hand on her arm. “Of course, Rey-Rey. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just got a bit of cabin fever over the last few days, I think.”

That seemed to satisfy Rose, but then she settled her silky black head on Rey’s shoulder.

“You know you can tell me if anything’s bothering you, right?”

She only nudged Rose’s head with her own in response, and through the rest of the show, they stayed that way.

The companionable silence was broken when Finn came in with plastic bags in tow. The two girls jumped up to help him with them, and he wrapped his arms around Rey's shoulders and lifted her straight off the ground with his hug.

“Toofs! Where ya been? It’s been too long! Didn’t you even miss me?”

Even though it had only been a few days since she last saw them, she had to agree. After everything that had happened, it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Course not. But I might reconsider if you get started on that spaghetti soon.”

“My affections shall not be toyed with in this manner, madam!”

Rose smacked his bottom. “Get on it, sir. We’re starving. Please tell me you got ground beef.”

“Oh, it will be meaty, all right.” He wiggled his eyebrows at his girlfriend and moved his face close to hers.

Something inside Rey twanged in pain at the easy loverly affection. Which made her all the more determined to make her smile bright.

“Please, guys, I want to keep my appetite for dinner,” she begged them.

The night passed pleasantly—just as she hoped for, and exactly as she needed. They all made dinner together and then chatted happily over the food. Later, when Rose saw the thin bandage on her arm as she changed out of her clothes, it was all too easy for Rey to lie again and tell her a low-hanging twig had smacked her as she rode home two days ago.

She’d lied so much today to people who cared so much about her. It was just another byproduct of the storm that she’d have to live with.

Rose asked her if she wanted cocoa. She managed to say no with what she hoped was an unaffected face.

They all crawled back onto the couch and watched a movie. But halfway through it she fell asleep, and she didn’t know if they actually finished it without her. The next thing she knew, Rose was stretching her legs out over the couch and Finn was tucking a blanket around her shoulders and placing a kiss on her hair.

She was so lucky to have them in her life.

Strangely enough, when they went inside their bedroom, she found herself unable to slide back into sleep.

Thinking of that someone who wasn’t quite sure if he had friends.

_Where was he sleeping tonight? Was he by himself? All alone and afraid for his life?_

This morning he’d taken the time to neaten her place up. Maybe even lingered. If she’d come back sooner, maybe he would have been there still when she opened her door—bare feet, bare chest, bare soul. Maybe he would have said sorry and taken her in his arms. Maybe he would have listened to her own apology. Maybe they could have talked more calmly and decided on a course of action that wouldn’t take him so far away from her. Maybe he would have kissed her again.

Maybe she should resign herself to the very probable reality that it had all been nothing but a very short chapter in her life that read like a fever dream.

And then tears were soaking her pillow once more.

 

*******

 

She woke up to a headache after spending the night tossing and turning on the couch. But it was a Saturday, and she had to work. After yesterday’s tardiness, she had no intention of ticking Chewie off again ever. At least they get to go home earlier today after the shorter weekend shift.

She decided on three things over the long night. One, that she’d look into replacing her phone today; two, that she’d find a way to use the computer in Han’s office and look shit up; and three, that she’d talk to Leia tomorrow afternoon when she and Han came home.

 _His life was in danger._ She couldn’t just sit by.

It was usually much easier to talk to Han—for all of Leia’s warmth, her sophistication still intimidated Rey most of the time—but that was only because their typical conversations revolved mostly around cars and food. Shooting the breeze. One didn’t exactly make idle chit-chat with Leia Organa. Or at least… Rey couldn’t imagine herself doing it. Poe managed it fine, she guessed, but she was no Poe.

But the thing with… _their son_ was a delicate matter, and Han did _not_ do delicate. He’d probably blow a gasket as soon as his name was mentioned.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to talk to Leia alone, though. Han was not the hardest person to spook out of socializing. Not that this would be a social call, exactly.

The peaceful routine of work was broken close to noon when Kaytoo, the body tech, sauntered up to her with something in his hand as she was finishing up a wheel alignment.

“Package for you, Kenobi.” he drawled. “No return address, though.”

It was a rectangular box a little bigger than her hand, and her name and the address of Han’s shop were printed on a sticker. There was another sticker that marked the thing “Fragile.”

Her heart thudded. She was almost certain who it was from, and she had a suspicion of just what was inside.

“Are you busy? Can I—can you—?” It was almost impossible to form the words with her lungs suddenly struggling so much, but Kaytoo seemed to understand that this was important to her.

“You owe me,” he said, pointing a finger at her.

“I do. Thank you, Kaytoo—I gotta—”

“Shoo.” He was already typing on the keyboard, his eyes fixed on the numbers and the diagram on the screen. She was glad he didn’t have anything sarcastic to say, for once.

Chewie was in the office, so she walked out the back door and sat on the single wide step. Her hands shook as the tore the wrapper off, and sure enough, it was a phone.

Brand new, and a model that she would never have wasted money on. She wouldn’t have been able to afford to in the first place.

But then the guy owned a fucking _TIE Silencer_. This would have been pocket change for him.

She lifted the thing out of its box and appreciated its weight in her hand. It sparkled white and silver, catching the light even under the shade of the awning. Like a damned jewel. It was _pretty_.

Hope welled in her soul.

She carefully set it aside to look for a note.

But… nothing.

Not on the box. Not in the box. She shook the plastic packaging, and nothing fell out. She even checked inside the pages of the tiny manual.

Nothing.

Maybe he made a note with an app. Maybe he saved his number! She powered the phone, and looked at the memo app. She looked at the contact list. The audio recordings. Messages. Photos.

Nothing.

She turned it off and took it apart. Pulled the battery out.

Nothing.

This was no overture. Not a means of reaching out. It was nothing but a pocket change replacement for something he’d broken.  

Her heart was as heavy and as cold and as broken apart as the sleek bits of metal and plastic in her hands.

 

*******

 

She decided to use it.

She’d fed the man her own food, let him sleep in her bed and performed him the service of fixing his wound up. She’d take this as payment.

Once she got home, she sat by the coffee table and plugged her old SIM card into it. She’d foregone using Han’s computer once the thought of having a working phone again with internet connectivity managed to push through the anger and the hurt.

She couldn’t find anything significant under his birth name, but ProfessioNexus had something on the one printed on his driver’s license. There was no photo, but the brief summary told her he was Director of Operations for First Order Development, Inc.

Gods in heaven. A _company director_.

The business networking website told her she had to sign up and connect with him if she wanted his direct contact information. She had no idea just who was after him, but if his problems were work related, then the last thing she’d want to do was ask for him at his work place.

The few images that came up under his names didn’t look anything like him. Just some random hits. She even signed into her rarely-used social media account, but he wasn’t there either.

There was nothing on the news for First Order. And she learned after many tedious minutes that arrest warrant lookups were almost always behind pay walls.

It was like he didn’t exist anywhere outside her mind. Did she dream the whole thing up?

But when she pressed on her arm, it hurt. And the new phone felt very solid in her hand.

She wondered if she was going crazy.

She guessed she’d find out for sure tomorrow when Han and Leia got home.

 

*******

 

That night, she dug the shirt he’d worn out of the bathroom hamper. She drowned in his scent and tried not to saturate the soft cloth with her tears as she cried herself to sleep again.

 

*******

 

She spent a good chunk of her early Sunday afternoon alternating between pacing the floor and spacing out flat on her back on it. There was no finessing the conversation she was going to have with Leia in a few hours, so she didn’t waste energy thinking up how to go about initiating it.

Not that she had anything better to do. She’d already cleaned her fridge out, and the bathroom, and washed all the dirty clothes and linens in the house—except for that one shirt, which was now rolled up under her pillow. She’d even gone out to restock her fridge. When she messaged Finn to tell him she got a new phone, he called and asked if she wanted to go bowling with them later. She declined.

Finally, at 3:30, she’d had enough of waiting, and so had her hair—quite a few of them were now all over the floor. Han and Leia’s plane was supposed to have arrived thirty minutes ago, and they were most likely on their way home in a cab. She rang Han’s phone, just to be sure.

His “Hey, kid” seemed even flatter than normal. He must be exhausted.

“Hey, boss. How was your trip?”

“Too long. Too loud.” His sigh was bone deep. For all of Han’s wanderlust, he loathed being on commercial flights with their planefuls of strangers.

She chuckled—and her amusement in the midst of all her anxiety surprised her. “I didn’t mean just the plane ride. But you can tell me all about it later. You on your way home?”

“Yeah, just got out of the airport. Be home in maybe forty minutes. Everything okay? D’you need anything?”

“Uh… can you tell Leia I need to talk to her when you get here? It’s kind of important.”

“I would, but she isn’t here with me.”

_What?_

She tried not to let her rising panic spill into her voice. “Is she still with Luke, then?”

“No. Got a call this morning. Urgent business.”

“Oh. Do you know when she’s coming back?”

“Not sure, but probably sometime this week.”

That could be in two days. Or in six. She didn’t know if she could wait six whole days to talk to Leia about this. Her fingers trembled over the bridge of her nose.

“Okay. Okay. I—I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

“All right.”

She hung up and flopped on her back, shaky and limp all at once.

What the hell was she going to do?

 

*******

 

She’d mustered the courage to text Leia and asked to be informed when she came home so she could talk to her.

But then the days of the week passed—too slowly—much like those not-quite-nightmares where nothing jumped out of dark corners but each shadow felt infinitely threatening. She felt completely frayed, and she knew she’d managed to annoy everyone around her at one point or another—her co-workers with some careless mistakes which were thankfully minor, Finn by refusing all his invitations to go out with him and Rose, and Rose herself by pestering her about Leia but not telling her just why it was so important.

But she was almost at the point where she didn’t care.

She almost didn’t care, either, that he probably didn’t care for her.

But he could be dead in a ditch, for all she knew, and the very real possibility was killing her.

Han had gone somewhere, too, in another one of his extended trips which usually coincided with Leia’s longer off-state projects like this one. Catching up with far-away friends. And that meant she couldn’t talk to him either.

On Thursday, Rose called her around noon time to tell her that Leia had come to the office.

Before Rose could even hang up, she was running.

The two blocks felt like twenty, with how little she’d been sleeping. And eating. After bursting through the front door, she bent over and wasted precious minutes dry heaving, and she barely registered Kaydel rubbing her back and yelling for Rose. The faces of her friends swam before her eyes along with a million dancing black and white spots—Kaydel, Rose, Finn, Jess and Poe—and everyone else in the room, staff and clients and visitors, but she brushed all of them off and staggered into Leia’s office.

“ _Rey!_ What in the prophet’s name is the matter? Are you all right?”

The tiny lady pulled her onto a chair and squeezed her shoulders.

“Breathe, sweetie, _breathe_.”

The part of her brain outside of the sizable chunk that was trying not to have her pass out noted that she was in her grease-splattered blue coveralls while Leia’s suit was an immaculate ivory, but she couldn’t even gather enough strength to push her away.

“Talk to me, Rey. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She lifted her watery gaze to Leia’s, and _there they were, his brown, brown eyes._  

When she started sobbing, Leia moved away for a second to yell at everyone to get back to work, and then she slammed the windowed door on their concerned faces and then twisted its blinds closed.

She gathered Rey in her arms once again and brushed her hand gently over Rey’s hair as she stood over her.

The dam broke loose, and finally, the words she’d been wanting to say for so long came rushing out with her sobs.

“Leia—you have to—you have to— _Ben_ —”

At the sound of her son’s name, Leia’s hand stilled, and she tilted Rey’s face up to hers. Those brown eyes were so wide and so pained.

“Ben—you have to help him. He’s in trouble—someone’s trying to kill him— _please, Leia, please_ , you have to find Ben—I don’t know where he is— _please_ —”

Tears spilled down Leia’s cheeks.

And then she spoke the last words Rey expected to hear.

_“How did you know?”_

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unfortunately Ben-less, but I wanted to show Rey's support system, which she absolutely needed after that devastation. Not that she took enough advantage of it--she just has to keep it all inside, doesn't she? Silly girl. But I hope the change from the earlier isolation to this wasn't too jarring. 
> 
> I want to thank you all for your very kind words which have been very encouraging. It makes me bone-deep happy that you guys are connecting with the characters, and your comments renew my determination to do these lovely paper-people justice every time I read them. Thank you so much for staying on! :)


	10. Chapter 10

*******

 

It took a while for Rey to calm down, but Leia’s voice, her soft hands on Rey’s hair and some water which she insisted Rey force down her aching throat slowly worked their magic. She sat in a daze and barely heard Leia calling Chewie to tell him she wasn’t feeling well and that she’ll be taking the rest of the day off.

She would have felt bad about leaving work so suddenly—she’d been in the middle of an alternator replacement—but what Leia said hadn’t been a lie. She was just so drained, and though there was a sense of relief from finally venting the pressure which had been building for days, it felt like it left a raw crater in her.

Leia insisted that they go somewhere more private for their conversation. The thought entered Rey’s mind that this place wasn’t a stranger to the misery and the horrors of the Resistance clients’ lives, and that its walls had heard tales far more gruesome than what they were about to talk about. But she wasn’t going to disagree, as even though no one could hear or see inside the enclosed space, she recognized in herself the irrational feeling that the presence of the people she knew outside was pressing in on the walls.

When they emerged from Leia’s office, though, only Finn and Rose were standing close by, their heads together in quiet conversation. She reassured them around their hugs and their questions that she was okay, and then promised them that she would talk with them later. She hoped they felt in her answering hugs just how sorry she was that she hadn’t confided in them and made them worry so much.

They decided to go to Han and Leia’s house, and Rey knew it wouldn’t take long with Leia’s infamously heavy foot on the gas. Her life in politics and her never-ending stream of personal projects had necessitated she save time wherever she could to accommodate her impossible schedule, and she once proudly told Rey that she’d only ever gotten into an accident three times in her life. And at least if they got into one now, Rey could be sure the car’s safety features were the best in the market, and that her chances of survival were high.

“So,” Leia opened up, “I suppose you’ve guessed that Han’s with Ben right now.”

No, she hadn’t had time to think about that. But that did make more sense than if Han was off with his friends while he was fully aware that his son was in mortal danger.

“Have you known about Ben for a long time?” Leia asked in a quiet voice.

“I… before last week, it was brought up in conversation once.” _By me,_ she didn’t want to add.

“Han and I had hoped none of that would get out. Which is silly, I know, with all the eyes that have always been on us. But… with time, it just became easier to keep it under wraps.”

Rey felt a trickle of resentment seeping out from the lump inside her, and if there was a hint of accusation in her voice, she did nothing to stem it.

“You have a son. Why would you want to hide that? Why would you want to hide Ben?”

Leia’s throat worked. “We… we thought we’d lost him. We _had_ lost him. It was what he wanted, to not have anything more to do with us.”

Rey may not have the whole story yet, but she knew that what Leia said was wrong. Ben had needed them so much, it had been so obvious, and especially when he started pushing them away. She remembered that painful November evening, and Leia’s words of regret about not having done enough. On that point, Rey agreed wholeheartedly. They should have done more.

“I saw you one time in your garden. You and Han were… talking about him. I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, and I left right away. And then I asked Poe about it. That’s how I know. He told me a little about how Ben was in school.” She hastened to add, “But please don’t be mad at Poe. I was the one who wanted to find out.”

Leia was silent for a moment.

“They were friends when they were little. I… I don’t know what Poe told you, but… Ben was a sweet little boy. A wonderful child who… followed his dad around everywhere and swore he’d grow up to be just like him.” The small smile on Leia’s face was laced with bitterness.  

“And so smart. He always had this… sensitive intelligence. He loved reading and writing. Poetry, especially. It wasn’t just motherly bias… they were really good for someone so young. You know how I know for sure?” Her face softened. “When he was thirteen, he got his poem selected for print in a magazine… one he’d calligraphed himself. He insisted we frame it, and it’s still up in his room. He used to say that was the proudest moment of his life.”

And then her smile faltered. “He didn’t make friends easily, though, which always worried us. And everything that happened later was…”

To Rey’s horror, Leia breathing cracked, and there were once again tears on her face.

“Leia, pull over. We can stop here for now.”

But Leia visibly marshaled her emotions, and reassured Rey, “I’m okay. I’m okay. We’re almost there, anyway, so let’s just… continue this when we get there.”

When they got to the house, Leia brought Rey upstairs and opened the door to a guest room. She all but ordered Rey to take a shower and get out of her work clothes, and offered her a white robe to change into later. This reminded Rey of how she’d probably ruined Leia’s suit, and she nervously offered to have it cleaned.

But Leia only smiled at her and said, “Don’t be silly. I’m married to a grease monkey myself, remember? This is nothing I can’t handle. And by that I mean I know someone who can make it good as new.”

She exited the room with a wink, and Rey couldn’t help smiling.

There wasn’t a lot of time to enjoy the hundred different showerhead settings, but the array of perfumed shower gels in pretty little bottles made her appreciate the expression “feeling like a princess” for the first time in her life. When she stepped up to the ornate mirror, she wasn’t sure if it was the hot water or the complex cocktail of embarrassment and pleasure in her blood that turned her face red.

Around the exotic bouquet that rose from her skin, she wrapped the criminally fluffy robe, and then she stepped into a pair of slippers by the door. Not for the first time since coming to this place, she wondered just how people ever got used to such luxury. Do these things stay special if it’s what you had every day?

Leia was in the kitchen, just as she expected, now in a more casual dark green blouse and slacks, pouring tea into two thankfully not-too-dainty cups. They sat in silence for a bit, and the hot brew felt reassuringly fortifying, just what Rey needed for what was to come.

“Now, Rey,” Leia said at last, “tell me how you know that Ben’s in trouble.”

Out poured Rey’s account of what happened, and she powered through the sight of Leia’s swimming eyes and trembling lips. The soft-hearted lady didn’t say anything through the entire thing, but reached for Rey’s hand a few times whenever the words stalled in her throat.

The only thing she omitted was the fact that she and Ben had been intimate. It wouldn’t serve any purpose to tell Leia that, and she didn’t want to deal with whatever complicated feelings that might bring to life. That part was between her and Ben, best kept in the past where it belonged.

She told Leia that Ben didn’t really give her details about what happened to him—just that someone tried to kill him and that he’d feared they’d keep trying. And when she came to the part where they argued, she broke into fresh tears.

“Leia… I shouldn’t have made him leave. The things he said to me… it wouldn’t have mattered later on. He should have stayed here and stayed safe. But I… I told him to go. He could have been in great danger. I’m so sorry, Leia… I’m so sorry—”

Leia stood up to get a roll of paper towels and then tore some off for Rey. And then her hands found their way once again around Rey’s shoulders. “He’s okay now, Rey. Or… he will be okay.”

At that correction, Rey pulled back. “Can… can you tell me where he is?”

Leia’s throat worked. “He’s… in jail.”

Shock flooded Rey’s nerves. “Someone tried to kill _him_. Why is he the one behind bars?”

“He _is_ innocent. We got the best defendant for him, Rey. Do you know Mr. Nunb? He’s been to the office a few times.”

Rey remembered the jowly gentleman with the ridiculously infectious laugh that Finn liked to mimic. He was actually Han’s friend who had served in the war with him, and now occasionally offered his services to the Resistance outside his own private practice. So Ben was in good hands, but until Leia can tell her that he was a free man…

“Can you tell me what happened?”

It was Leia’s turn to tell a story.

Ben was working late in the empty First Order office with his assistant one night, and they heard loud arguing from the office of his boss, a certain Andrew Snoke. Before they could barge in, he heard an unfamiliar voice demand a payout that Snoke had promised. It was in return for burning down the stranger’s own unit in a tiny commercial strip in an area that First Order had been wanting to develop but whose owners refused to sell.

But a woman who had been working late in another unit had died in the fire, and the stranger had become a person of interest. The desperate man needed the promised money to go abroad. Ben listened as Snoke, in typical fashion, cruelly taunted the man for his foolishness. There was a scuffle, and the guy tried to stab Snoke with a knife he’d hidden in his jacket. But it turned out that Snoke had a gun in a desk drawer, and he shot the man dead.

Ben rushed into the room to confront Snoke, but Snoke reminded him that he’d been the one to initiate the failed negotiation months earlier, and that he could easily be implicated in the whole thing. Ben flew into a rage and tried to overpower Snoke, but his boss managed to pull the trigger and wound him. Before he could shoot again, Ben fled.

Leia said that Ben never told them that he came to Chandrila, but apparently he decided to approach the police after that. That was when he discovered that Snoke had somehow managed to twist the tale so that Ben was now the primary suspect for the shooting. He was arrested right there, the same day that Leia and Han were set to come back from Ahch-To.

And to Leia, Han and Luke’s shock, he’d called her. By a stroke of unbelievable luck, he still had her number from more than fifteen years ago memorized.

“He didn’t tell us he stayed with you.”

She really was that irrelevant. In this grand, twisted story, she didn’t even merit a mention. She decided right then to take the reins on her nothingness and to put the pain away for later, when she was alone.

And so she sidestepped her own non-part in Ben’s story and said, instead, “I don’t think he planned to come to Chandrila. He was in pain and terrified. He said he freaked out.”

Leia was silent for a long moment.

Rey told herself that for Leia and Han’s sake, she needed to know if things were getting better between them.

“Leia, I’m sorry if this is indelicate, but… how was he when he talked to you? I mean he… he got very angry whenever you and Han came up.”

Leia’s lips trembled around a small smile. “That was the first time we’d seen him—or even just talked to him—in more than fifteen years. He left when he was seventeen. He was… it was… we weren’t the best parents, Rey.” She dissolved into sobs. “And it is the hardest thing to live with. We made many, many mistakes and hurt our boy.”

Rey didn’t have words. She didn’t want to lie and tell Leia she was wrong, or that things weren’t that bad. She did the only thing she could and gave Leia a hug.

Leia continued, “He was the most important thing to us, but we let everything else get in the way. Managing campaigns, helping set up platforms… I got eaten up by work. No, that’s not even it. I _let_ myself get eaten up by work. And you know Han… he’s always off somewhere. I put my own child in the backburner because I thought he was strong and he was handling it okay.”

This was so much worse than that time in the garden. Leia had been carrying this guilt around for so long, utterly wrecked inside even as she helped other people put their lives back together. Rey could do nothing but be an audience to her self-flagellation.

“Earlier on he seemed fine whenever we talked on the phone. One the _phone_. I raised my son over the phone, Rey. No, not that either. Nannies and tutors—there was always people around him like that. We knew things weren’t perfect, but I thought we were managing okay, that things were fine. But… they weren’t. And when we realized it, it was too late.”

As Leia fractured, Rey thought of how she knew just what it was like to live without parents. But with Leia here telling her all this from the perspective of the failed parent, she realized that it’s one thing to not have them, and another thing entirely to have them but _not_ have them as Ben did. She was so wrong to have thrown that at him in spite.

“He started getting physical in school. We didn’t even know he was being bullied, but later on he’d had enough of it. He never defended himself whenever we got called to his school… just stayed stone silent. At that point he barely talked to us. And who could blame him?” Leia’s sobs rang across the kitchen.

Rey knew all about bullying. But instead of fighting back, she taught herself how to hide. But Ben… Ben was too visible, with his physical size and his family’s fame. Hiding wouldn’t have been an option for him.

“And around that time, Luke had recently put up his school. So we sent him there, thinking things would be easier for him with a lot less people, and with Luke’s curriculum. But…”

Rey prompted her, “He left Luke’s school?”

“He burned down a small temple first. The pavilion where they meditated.”

Rey gasped. She knew there was so much anger in him. But arson… She didn’t know what to think.

“Was anyone… was anyone hurt?”

“No. He did it the night he left, long after their evening meditations were over. The place was empty.”

“Why did he do it?” was all she could think to ask.

“It was a last act of defiance. A—pardon my Naboo—fuck-you to Luke and his philosophy. Luke had told us how he struggled to comply. He was just too angry. Luke closed the academy after that school year.”

She could imagine him as a teenager with all that pent-up rage at having to deal with his parents’ neglect, and then suddenly being fed a spiritual diet of Jedism. Was Luke such a stranger to his nephew that he thought that would have gone well?

“Where did he go after that?”

“It took us weeks to track him down. The private investigator found him working in a warehouse in Coruscant. When Han came to get him, he—” Leia’s breath stuttered, “—he flew into a rage and knocked his dad out cold. He was bigger than Han at that point. But before that he… he swore to Han that if we dragged him back, he’d… he’d kill himself.”

Her tears, it appeared, sprung from an endless well deep in her soul. It hurt so much to think of Ben so broken.

“And by then we had no reason to not believe he'd do it. So we let him be. Every now and then, we had someone check on him in secret. He must have really hated us so much that he changed his name as soon as he could. He no longer goes by Benjamin Solo. Did you know? And then he managed to get a sponsor to get him through university. That was… Snoke. And right after graduating, he went to work for him. He seems completely indebted to the man. And now… here we are.”

“Here we are.”

Her eyes hurt. Her entire head felt like it was full of mucus. And Leia didn’t look any better. There was now a small mountain of crumpled paper towels on the table, next to their teacups and the half-empty glasses of water—a paltry attempt at rehydrating after their flood of tears.

After a while, Leia spoke again, “Rey… you said he… hurt you. But please… please tell me if it got really bad.”

There was a fearful look in Leia’s eyes.

Rey hastened to reassure her, “I’ve told you all of it. He put me in a chokehold and tied me up, but only because he was afraid. He was… okay afterwards.”

Leia’s eyes probed deep.

“Why all these tears for my boy?”

She could feel her eyes widening, and so she looked away to tell her lie.

“He was innocent, and he could have died. And he’s your son.”

“Is that all?”

Rey had to feign confusion. “I… I don’t really know him, Leia. I was just his nurse those two nights.”

She could still feel Leia’s eyes on her.

“I’ll be going back there later. Is there anything you want me to tell him?”

_I hope you’re not afraid where you are. I hope you get out soon. I hope you continue letting Han and Leia make amends._

_I miss you._

“No.”

Leia got up, wrapped her arms around Rey, and kissed the top of her head.

“Thank you for taking care of Ben, Rey. Thank you for letting my son stay. And I’m… I’m so sorry he hurt you. That’s on me and Han, too. If we’d been better parents, he wouldn’t… he wouldn’t have been so angry… I’m so sorry…”

She put her own arm around Leia’s waist.

“The important thing is he’s talking to you now. Leia, that makes me so—I am so happy for you that he is. I think… I think things will be better now. Or… they’re on their way there.”

The hope for Leia and Han filled her heart until it ached. Or maybe it ached because it was cracking at the thought that she wasn’t going to be part of that _better now_.

“Yes… yes. We just have to get this trial over with. I’m very hopeful. Rey…” Leia pulled back and held Rey’s shoulders. “You’re a good person. It was a blessed day when you drove into town with Poe and Finn. And Han… that grumpuss is always talking about how you brighten things up at the garage. He tells me all the funny little things you get up to, did you know? I’m just… so very grateful that you’re here, Rey.”

Leia pressed Rey’s damp face to her bosom. All the hugs she’d received today from this wonderful person… This must be what it’s like to have a mother. She was happy that at least she got to have this this one time.

They ate Han’s chili from a few nights ago—it was perfect for clearing your head of snot after a crying jag, Rey discovered—and then Leia once again offered the guest bedroom to Rey so she could rest while Leia made some phone calls. She almost declined, but then she remembered that her bike and her bag were still in the garage, and she’d need a ride to get them. She accepted the offer and asked Leia to wake her up when she was ready to go.

As she drifted off to sleep, she thought of Ben’s room somewhere down the long hall, and Ben’s poem on his wall, and Ben’s big hand wrapped around a beautiful pen writing beautiful letters down.

 

*******

 

She talked to Rose and Finn that night after bringing takeout for dinner to their place. Earlier, she’d asked Leia if she could tell her best friends a little of what happened, and so she told them an abbreviated version of things—once again excluding the parts that should remain between her and Ben—and then asked them to promise to never tell anyone, for her and Leia’s sakes.

She was grateful for their sympathy, but she didn’t stay the night.

 

*******

 

Time passed.

Since her part in the story was long over, she didn’t even have any reason to wait for anything.

But she did check the news, and what little she found online, she already knew from Leia’s texts.

The afternoon with Leia had been cathartic, but after that it felt like Ben’s shadow was always with them whenever they spent any time together.

Han came back, but she didn’t know how to talk to him about any of it. And it seemed he wasn’t inclined to bring it up, either, so they worked around the elephant in the garage and instead defaulted to the same old inconsequential things. And if there was a new quiet watchfulness in him… well, at least it wasn’t something she had to directly address.

Sometimes she had to remind herself that this was the new normal. But routine did dull the sharp edges, she found.

On Rook’s birthday, Han brought all of the garage employees to Maz’s for a drink. There was a soccer game on.

Han suddenly mumbled, only loud enough for her to hear as she sat right next to him on the bar.

“Ben wasn’t much for sports.”

It was so random and so sudden that she didn’t know how to react.

He continued, “Kid was always tall for his age, so I thought he could have maybe tried something. You’ve seen him. Zero interest in any of it, though. But he always beat me at chess.” He chuckled.

She found that she had something to say, after all. “He’s shit at rummy, though.”

Han looked at her. With almost the exact same curious face Ben had.

She went on with a small smile, “He taught me how to play, but then he kept losing.”

“Cards weren’t his thing. I guess he has me to thank for that.”

Rey knew that Han liked to gamble—everybody did. Not really these days, but that was how he got his prized Falcon. She could just imagine how much of a sore point that was when Ben was growing up.

Their words dried up again after that.

On screen, someone almost scored a goal.

 

*******

 

Sometimes at night, she would torture herself thinking of how they’d given themselves to each other. She would bury her nose in his shirt and hug her pillow tight, and though her fingers weren’t as good as his, they were better than nothing.

 

*******

 

Leia must have noticed that she was barely responding to her text updates about Ben and to her dinner invitations, and so one time she dropped by the garage to _visit_.

“I asked him about you,” she told Rey on her lunch break.

Her messy burrito commanded all her attention.

But Leia wouldn’t be deterred. “He told me to say thank you.”

_For what, exactly?_ A thank-you that your mom forced out of you really didn’t count for anything.

“Anything for your son, Leia.” She looked at Leia and forced a smile. “Well. Gotta get back to work.”

She was sure she could handle the little bit of dismay that made its way onto Leia’s face as she walked away.

 

*******

 

The days were beads on a string, one knocking into the next in comfortingly predictable fashion. All too soon, another weekend had come again.

She was sure she’d already lived through this exact same Saturday when Kaytoo announced, “Package for you, Kenobi.”

For a second, she could only look at him.

“Ooh, this looks very fancy.” He held a beribboned cream-colored box with two hands. There was a logo in gold print on a corner, but she didn’t recognize it. No stickers on this one, but there was a small card envelope taped under the neat blue ribbon. “You got a secret admirer you aren’t telling us about?”

Her heart was beating so fast that the only lame thing she could come up with was, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

She tucked an edge of the box against her stomach with one arm—it was more stable this way, and she didn’t appear as shaky—and with her free hand she slipped the card out.

“Ms. Rey Kenobi” was all it said in someone’s neat handwriting.

“That’s a female script right there,” Kaytoo volunteered over her shoulder.

She shot him a wry look as she walked off. But she thought he was right.

“Stay there, and maybe I’ll tell you what’s in it,” she told him. Thankfully he did.

She placed the box on the break room table and carefully untied its ribbon. When she lifted the lid, a gasp slipped past her lips.

A dozen perfect, plump strawberries sat in individual compartments, each one cushioned by a waxy nest of curly paper strips.

Again there was no note. But this couldn’t possibly be a replacement for anything… the closest it would have been for was her strawberry jam, but he’d turned his nose up at it.

Her heart galloped as she stared at their shiny round surfaces. The redness made her mouth water, and their seeds looked like they’d each been put in place by a master artist. It looked like fucking _art_.

_What did this mean?_

Whose handwriting was that? That couldn’t have been Ben’s. Was it just some random store clerk’s? Did Han know about this?

She slid the lid back on and retied the ribbon—a little too tightly that it dented the cardboard a bit—and as she pushed things around in the fridge to make room for the box, she heard Kaytoo and Han talking right by the door.

“… don’t know, she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Wasn’t there something on the box? A brand name?”

So Han had no idea what it was.

“It looked like a present. It even had a ribbon on it. What is it, Rey? You promised to tell.”

She had to say something or she’d never hear the end of it.

“It’s just… it’s food.”

“Is it food you can _share_ with us?” Kaytoo asked. Too innocently.

She closed the refrigerator door and pointed at him.

“Don’t you dare touch it.”

“But _who is it from?_ ”

She put her finger over her lips. “A secret admirer. Shh.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t shut Kaytoo up as she’d hoped, and he kept pestering her.

And there was a look in Han’s eyes that told her that now he knew.

 

*******

 

She couldn’t believe she said no to trying out the new buffet place with Rose and Finn. On a lovely Saturday night. All because of some _fucking fruit_.

The beautiful box sat in front of her, on her coffee table, and it felt like she was on a goddamn date. With _fucking fruit_. She brought up the rarely-used camera app on her phone and took pictures from all angles. However much she’d want to prolong it, they weren’t going to last.

Like so many things in this world.

The only thing she could do was to savor every bite as much as she could. She plucked the first one from its paper nest and sunk her teeth into it.

It was every bit as succulent and as delicious as she’d dreamed. So perfectly sweet and sour and juicy that her jaws stung from how her mouth watered. It didn’t take long to get to the third piece.

_Why did you give me these perfect little things, Ben?_

She remembered Rose explaining how salt sometimes made things taste sweeter. But right now she couldn’t draw any conclusions on that, not even with her tears mixing in with the flavor of the strawberries.

When she put her head down to wipe them off on her arm, she had to close her eyes. In her mind’s eye, his lips weren’t quite as red.

But they had been a thousand times sweeter.

 

*******

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter without Ben--I'm so sorry! But he was, uh, otherwise indisposed and couldn't come to town. But not for much longer! We all miss him. Leia needed her moment, too. 
> 
> Thank you for staying on! :)


	11. Chapter 11

*******

 

Ben was free.

Leia told Rey as much, and the internet filled in the rest. Even with Mr. Nunb’s efforts, the trial had stalled when it was made known that Ben had been part of the team that negotiated with the property owners almost a year ago, and it somehow became admitted as evidence of possible collusion with the man Snoke had killed. It had been Snoke’s word against Ben’s, and the head of First Order was a powerful man who was not without his connections. The fact that Ben had run away after the homicide did not help his case either.

But then a critical piece of evidence turned up: Ben’s assistant had apparently taken audio recordings of the confrontation that night outside of Snoke’s knowledge, and it had turned the case on its head. It had in one swoop killed the charges against Ben and focused the eye of the law on First Order, enough so that an investigation was initiated. And when an incident from years ago similar enough to what had happened surfaced, with evidence corroborating Snoke’s direct involvement in it, that hammered the last nail onto Snoke’s coffin.

And quite literally, since the man was soon found with a bullet hole through his chin and out the top of his wrinkled bald head, with his own hand wrapped around the gun. Whether it was an actual suicide or the work of someone else afraid of being discovered was irrelevant to the fact that Ben had been absolved of guilt.

And that was the end of that story.

 

*******

 

Sometimes Rey wondered if her involvement in the whole thing had been nothing but a fantastical dream.

But she only had to look at her phone to read Leia’s messages, the scar on her arm in the bathroom mirror, and the blue ribbon around the handle of her refrigerator door which had once been wrapped around a fancy box of fruit to remember that it had all been real.

She thought she’d made it pretty clear to Leia, even without saying anything directly to her, that she was okay with not being updated. But she somehow persisted, even though Rey barely acknowledged the messages anymore. Leia was clearly hoping for something, but whatever it was, Rey didn’t share the same hope. If Ben wanted to reach out to her, he would have already, even through his mother. But none of Leia’s texts indicated they’d had any input from him. And now that the trial was over, there was no reason for Leia to even keep messaging her about him.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe that would help her move on with her life.

That box of strawberries notwithstanding. And whatever the intent was behind it. For all she knew, it could have just been another pocket change message—his mom relayed that thank-you that one time, after all.

Sometimes when she went about her business around town, her heart would drop to her feet when she’d see the same shade of almost-black on someone’s head. Or a similar tall build in similarly dark clothing. But it was never him. Of course it wasn’t.

Now that he was on speaking terms with his parents, though, it was not outside the realm of possibility that he might visit them. She just hoped she’d have enough of a warning before it happened. But she couldn’t ask that of Han or Leia without explaining why she’d need one. So she resorted to running “keep your damn cool, Rey” simulations in her head of what she’d say or how she’d act in case that really came to pass.

Just in case.

 

*******

 

October came, and with it the news of Rose and Finn’s engagement. She was ecstatic for them. Finn had cried when he told her, and when she wrapped her arms around him it was with the happiness that her dear friend had now truly found a family of his own. Maybe one or two of the tears she’d shed with him were secretly for herself, but she knew it didn’t mean that the same good fortune couldn’t come to her life somewhere down the line.

She’d realized that pain hiding in the corners of your heart didn’t mean that life couldn’t be beautiful. There was a lot happiness to be found if you could stay in the many wide, open spaces in between.

They were going to have a small engagement party the Saturday right before Shelova Week. Rose had wanted one separate from the next weekend’s Harvest Festival day, the culmination of the week-long holiday, which was also the biggest celebration of the year. Rey decided it was a good time to maybe consider trying new things, and she swallowed her embarrassment and asked Rose if she’d help her buy a dress.

They made a day of it the Sunday before the party, and through Kaydel’s cooing and Jessika’s teasing, Rey managed to find what she thought was the perfect first-time dress: a sleeved brown fine-print paisley with a modest V-neckline and a slightly flared skirt that almost reached her knees. While Jess thought it was too modest—“It’s just a sin, babe—you’re wasting all that leg length you’ve been given,”—Rose thought it would go well with her denim jacket.

And when they found out she had nothing but sneakers and boots, they dragged her into another shop, so now she had a pair of nice ballet flats to go with it. She wanted to kiss Kaydel in gratitude when in another store her friend staved off an overeager sales clerk and instead guided her through the mascara and powder and moisturizing lip tints herself while Rose and Jess went off and played with the eye shadow samples.

As it was, even just that small selection was already overwhelming, and that night she found herself looking at how-to videos on her phone. Finally, at one-thirty in the morning—on a freaking Monday—with a pile of red- and black- and brown-stained wet wipes and tissues on her coffee table and her eyes and lips stinging from all the rubbing, she decided that would have to do as practice. It wasn’t like she had anyone to impress, anyway.

And maybe, just maybe, when she finally decided to really commit on trying dating, she’d be much better at it all by then.

 

*******

 

When Saturday night rolled around, Rey thought she must have done an okay job with the makeup after all as she found herself the recipient of Poe’s effusive compliments. But before she could give him a wry reply, he was off gushing to Rose about how he’d marry her himself if Finn hadn’t gotten to her first.

Rose’s family was in the restaurant as well—even Paige, who was home for the holidays—and Mrs. Tico kept passing Rey the serving bowls, insisting she “Try this one, honey—it’s almost as good as Bob’s,” as Bob himself quietly beamed at his girls and murmured questions to his future son-in-law.

The wine and the upbeat jazz from the live band both made the mood all the merrier, and they all took turns dancing with each other—and Rey surprised herself by joining in. None of them seemed to mind when she stepped on their toes—not even Jess, with her open-toed shoes. At one point, the singer asked everyone to congratulate the newly-engaged couple, and even the guests who weren’t in their party cheered wildly when Finn dipped Rose dramatically over his arm and gave her a kiss in front of everyone.

It was, quite simply, a happy night.

She found herself in Poe’s arms when a slower song began playing, and she listened as he told her about his genius little sister Beebee’s shenanigans, the latest of which involved messing with the middle-school library computer so that every time a book was returned late, the speakers would blast the villain’s theme from a popular show when the account was brought up.

The story made her tear up in gut-busting laughter as the song finished—it was probably the wine, too, but she didn’t mind too much, for once—and Poe brushed off her tears playfully.

“It’s funny now, but wait till she’s in high school.”

“I know, right? Mom might just lock her up in her room till she’s eighteen.”

Suddenly the amusement on his face morphed into confusion as he looked behind her.

“Everything okay?” Rey asked.

“I thought… It can’t be, though.”

“What is it?”

He was rubber necking around her.

“I thought I saw… is that _Ben Solo?”_  

Her blood was instantly frozen in her veins, but she somehow managed to spin herself around to look out the glass. Sure enough, there was someone with his hair, his height and his dark clothes walking away, but she couldn’t be sure—

_Could it really be?_

Before she knew it, she was running past Poe, past the other people, mumbling sorry whenever she hit someone’s shoulder, and then she was out the door, but he was— _where did he go?_

There, a few buildings down, already crossing the street—

_Was it really him?_

“Stop! Stop!”

But he wouldn’t stop, and he was getting farther and farther away—

 _“Benjamin Solo!”_ she screamed.

And then he did stop—froze, in fact, in the middle of the goddamn street, and he turned around and looked at her.

_Ben._

His name echoed in her head, like a giant gong up a mountain making the trees shake. Her heart and her lungs were making a mess of her breathing, of her eyesight, of her balance. The annoyed honking of a passing motorcycle that barely missed him snapped him from his stupor, and she watched, gasping and swaying a little, as he slowly made his way back. He stopped ten feet from her.

_Ben._

She was blind and deaf to everything else. He’d gotten his hair trimmed, but everything else was exactly the same as she remembered. As in her dreams. Those eyes staring back. She realized she’d never seen him outside the confined space of her cottage, and strangely enough, out in the open, he looked just as big, a looming black bird of the night.

_Ben._

“How are you, Rey?”

How was she? She thought she was great not a minute ago. Dancing with Poe. Now she didn’t know at all.

None of her stupid keep-cool-Rey simulations applied. Her brain barely worked.

She licked her lips. “I’m good. You?” It was only polite.

“I… I got out three weeks ago.”

“Your mom told me.”

It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Got here last night.”

That, Leia didn’t tell her. But then, why would she?

“Oh.” She could only stare at him. There was a buzzing in her brain that made words hazy.

“You look very… you’re dressed up.” He dragged a shaky hand across his mouth as he looked down at the rest of her.

“I… we’re having a small party. My friends got engaged.”

“Oh...okay. Okay.” He nodded. “I’ll let you get back to it, then.”

And then he started walking backwards slowly. Away from her.

“Wait.”

He froze again, about to turn away, but then he looked back at her.

“Why are you here, Ben?”

She could see his throat working.

“I’ve… come home. For now.”

“For now… Do you mean… do you mean you’re leaving again?”

“I don’t know yet. I quit my job. It’s a shitshow in there right now.” He ran his fingers through his hair.

It was too much to process, Ben being here, Ben being _home_. Ben right in front of her, sucking up all the light and air around him till there was nothing but _him_. What did it mean? How long was he going to be here for?

_What was she going to do?_

And she had to know—

“Where were you headed just now?”

He swallowed. “Mom told me you’d be here.”

She could feel her eyes grow even bigger.

“You were looking for me?”

He chomped on his lips in that way of his, that very Ben tell of trying to find the right words.

“I didn’t know you were at a party. I just… I wanted to—”

Before he could say anything more, she heard Poe speak from right behind her.

“Ben! I’ll be damned. It is you.”

Ben’s gaze moved away from hers, and instantly his eyes were much colder as he looked at Poe, who now stood next to her.

“Dameron.”

He’d brought Finn and Rose with him. How long had they been there? How much did they hear? There was an answering coolness in their voices when they spoke.

“Is everything okay, Rey?” Finn asked.

And then Rose said, steel threading her voice, “You’re Ben Solo. You’re the one who hurt Rey.”

Poe’s brow wrinkled in confusion, and he put his hand on her back.

“Hurt her how? What happened, Rey?”

She looked back at Ben, and the stricken look in his eyes made her want to grab him and shake it out of him.

“I’ll leave you with your date, Rey. Guess I’ll see you later.”

And then he turned around and once again began walking away.

“Wait. _Wait!_ He’s not my—will you stop— _are you running away again, Ben Solo?”_

He did an about face at that provocation, hurt and anger and confusion warring on his face as he looked at her friends and then back at her again.

“I just… I have things to say. Can we do this in private?”

When she stepped back, his face fell.

“Rey… please…” he choked.

“Let me just get my purse.”

She pushed through her friends and tried to ignore how they all shifted their gazes between her and Ben like well-dressed meerkats.

“Are you actually going with him?” Rose asked as she followed right behind her.

“Rey, I’m not sure this is a good idea—” Finn muttered.

But when she got to their table, she froze, suddenly remembering just why she was here. They’d been in the middle of a party—and not just any party, but her _best friends’ engagement dinner._ Was she really about to just up and leave?

She looked up at them, feeling so ashamed that she’d gotten so caught up in her own private thing while they were supposed to be celebrating.

“Your… your dinner… I… I…”

Rose sighed and ran her hands up and down Rey’s elbows.

“Rey, if you need to talk to him, you should go. This seems important.”

She nodded stupidly, conflicted. “We… we do need to sort this out. I’m so sorry I’m bailing, but… I don’t think this can wait.”

Finn put his hand on her back.

“Tell me first, Rey. Are you absolutely sure you’re safe with this guy?”

Rey nodded again, this time more confidently. “It was a misunderstanding before. Don’t worry. I promise I’ll be fine.”

She hoped she wasn’t wrong. He wouldn’t touch her, but she knew he _could_ hurt her in many different ways. Even if he didn’t mean to. She hugged them both to reassure them. And to thank them for understanding.

“Text us so we know you’re okay,” Rose said. “And Rey…”

Her friend pulled back and looked her in the eye.

“Whatever happens, you know you can talk to us, right?”

Her nod was a promise.

And then Finn piped up, “If that clown hurts you, I _will_ bring it to him. I mean I hope it won’t come to that—you didn’t tell me the guy’s a fucking tree.”

It defused the tension, and weak laughter escaped Rey’s throat.

“I’ll try my best.”

She took her bag and her jacket, and she gave her other friends a small apologetic smile. But there was no time to explain.

Ben Solo was outside, waiting for her.

He was by himself again, and when she moved next to him, she motioned that they should walk. They did so in silence around the corner, and a few buildings down, there was a bus stop bench in front of an empty lot overgrown with grass. It was late enough in the night that there weren’t a lot of people walking around anymore.

They sat down. He was the closest he’d been to her in so long. She thought he was too far away.

“You told me to leave,” he said.

She looked at him. Under the harsh yellow light of the street lamp, the color of his eyes was washed out, but she could still make out the moles on his face. And the faint scar that she left him with.

“I mean I… it wasn’t just me running away.”

That was fair. The crack was already there, but they’d both hammered the wedge in deeper.

“You weren’t going to stay, anyway. You had things to take care of.”

Ben stared at his feet.

She continued, “But I should have stopped you from going. I know that now. Not… not pushed you out the door when you were clearly in danger.”

“You did try. And… I said some horrible things to you.”

He did. She looked down at her hands and played with her fingers. It had hurt so much. Even just the memory of it.

“You… picked at some old wounds.”

“Rey…” his breath left him in a harsh gasp. “I’m sorry for hurting you. All the many stupid ways that I did. I’m just... I’m sorry. But especially for that.”

Was this enough? She was aware once again of the lump that had congealed somewhere inside her, now painfully unsticking itself from the walls of her soul.

“Mom told me about your parents. Fuck them, frankly.”

She looked at him, surprised at his sudden vehemence.

“But… but that’s beside the point. And… shit, I know I’m messing this up. The point is… my point is you didn’t deserve any of that. Rey…”

He came closer and turned so he faced her more directly. That face she’d seen so many times since he’d left, now a foot in front of her, and it was shaking everything up again. There was a pleading look in his eyes.

“You’d been nothing but good to me. And… and I hurt you in return. So much. I was panicking, but that was no excuse. You just wanted to help. It was beyond stupid, the things that I said. And maybe… maybe beyond forgivable, I know.”

His face was getting blurry, and she realized it was because her eyes were filling up.

“But it doesn’t matter that you forgive me. What matters is you know that you didn’t deserve any of the things I did and said to you. Do you know that? I was very wrong, and I’m so sorry. That was all me, Rey.”

She found she didn’t agree.

“But it does matter. It matters that I forgive you. It’s the only way we can move forward, Ben.”

There was more than just the pleading look in his swimming eyes now.

She continued, “I don’t know if I’ve forgiven you. I’m not even sure what it means. Nobody’s asked for it like this in my life. I’ve been… I’ve been hurting since you left, you know? And… right now, it feels like it’s still there. But what does it mean to forgive? Is it only when the hurt’s gone?”

She was surprised when he chuckled.

“What’s funny?”

“Just that… I’m the last person you should ask that question, Rey.”

The almost-amusement evaporated completely from his face.

“I haven’t done a lot of forgiving in my life. Maybe I should try it first before asking it of you, huh.”

His tears made their way down his cheeks. He’d been hurting so much more and for so much longer about his parents, and forgiveness for him had been unthinkable before he came back. But now he needed it too, and he was maybe realizing how bad it was to be in that position of desperately wanting to make things right with someone you’ve hurt so much. She wanted to put her arms around him and hold him as he dealt with this painful epiphany. But that kind of comfort wasn’t hers to offer.

So she simply said, “You’re here now. That’s way more than they’ve hoped for in a long time, I think.”

He wiped at the tears in his eyes.

“Sorry, I… this isn’t about me.”

He took a few calming breaths, and then went on.

“You know, you terrified me.”

She looked at him in surprise. There was a small smile on his face.

“From the beginning, even after I… you know… jumped on you and tied you up, you did all that for me. Patched me up, gave up your bed for me, fed me…”

“You were injured, Ben. Anyone else would have done the same.”

“No, Rey, not everyone. That’s just what I mean. I had absolutely no frame of reference for someone like you. Since I left this place, the people I’ve spent time with—if you didn’t hate someone, you were afraid of them. And vice versa. It was all about how to… best use each other. And it works. Competition and manipulation and ambition… they just… they all work so well together. They get you places. And for a long time, I thought that was it. But then… but then you happened.”

It was hard to breathe when he looked at her like that.

“You were just… good to me. Without expecting anything in return. And that fucking scared me, Rey. Because softness like that didn’t have a place in my life, but you felt so fucking good—everything you did for me, everything about you—and that meant maybe I’d been wrong about things. And I knew I had to go back, face my own shit, and I didn’t know what to do about… about these new things.

“And then… and then I thought, you know, I thought maybe it was just this place, the bad weather, that… that wound splitting my side—whatever—that I could just forget all of it when I left. But I guess something inside me couldn’t deal with all that, so I just… I went back to what’s easy. Said all those things to you, because that’s what I knew to do.”

She could feel her chin trembling, the same way his lips did. Her tears tracked the same path down her face the way his did.  

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry, Rey. I don’t know yet how I’ll make things right with you. But for now, I’ll learn how to use my words better, Rey. I’d gotten used to… weaponizing everything I said, just because I needed it to survive. I’ll do better. Not just with you. Mom and Dad, too. And Mom… Mom said she’ll help me find someone to help me deal with… the anger and everything else.”

Leia knew some very good doctors. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but she was sure they could help.

“That’s good, Ben. Seeing someone for it, I mean. I’m glad you’re willing to give that a try.”

“And I guess leaving that place will help, too. I mean I was part of that toxic work culture, I see that now. You just get lost in it, but you don’t realize you… perpetuate it too. But you know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“Some of my co-workers visited me. In jail, I mean. Even fucking Hux.” He smiled. “He’s this guy I always butted heads with. And Mitaka—he’s my assistant. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. You might have heard from Mom or read somewhere, but he actually helped with the case. Recorded that whole thing while it was happening, but I didn’t know at the time. He had to disappear for a while because he thought Snoke would come after him. But then he visited me and… all that. After all the shit I put him through. I mean… you can guess I wasn’t the nicest boss. Anyway, he’s the one I asked to… to…”

He shot her a look, and she looked back curiously.

“I asked him to have those strawberries sent to you.”

So that’s why. And maybe that had been why there was no note. But if he’d really wanted to say something…

She swallowed. She might as well ask him.

“Why did you send me those strawberries, Ben?”

Ben’s throat worked. “I just… I just remembered you said you’ve never tried them.”

That… still didn’t say much. But she guessed that was all the answer she was going to get.

“Those weren’t just any old fruit, though. I looked them up, you know. They cost as much as… I don’t know… two weeks’ worth of food? Maybe three.”

“Were they… were they okay?”

Rey smiled and thought of the nights she had them, how she looked forward to having them, how it had felt so special. Even if it was all just in her head.

“They were perfect. The most delicious things I’d ever put in my mouth. I ate four in one sitting the first time, and the rest I had one at a time every night when I came home from work. Thank you, Ben.”

He blinked at her. “Good… good. I’m glad you enjoyed them.”

_It was almost like you were there with me._

But she continued, instead, “And thank you for the phone… by the way.”

Rey pulled it out of her purse and showed him.

“I… it’s what I use now. My old phone was four years old, so this is… a bit much for a replacement. But… thank you.”

She pulled up the camera app and took a picture of him. Because why not?

He chuckled. “Did you just take a picture of me?”

Rey smiled, but only shrugged in reply. And before she could overthink it, she pressed the phone into his hands. He could say no, anyway.

“Will you give me your number?” she asked a little breathlessly.

He looked at her for a second, and then typed something in. She sent him a simple _Hey Ben, this is Rey_ as soon as he gave it back, and when his own phone vibrated in his pocket, he read it and messaged back.

There was a little pinch in her heart when she read his words: _Ben Solo, at your service._

But she smiled. “Not _Kylo Ren_?”

Ben said quietly, “I left Kylo Ren in Coruscant.”

If anyone had told Rey this morning that she’d be sitting at a bus stop at nine tonight, just being quiet with Ben Fucking Solo, she would have thought they’d skipped one breakfast too many. And yet here she was, doing just that, and for how small the smile on her face was, it felt like the rest of it stretched an arc a mile wide inside her into which all the bitterness was slowly draining out.

“Thank you for this, Ben. It means a lot that you… told me these things. And I want to say I’m sorry, too, for… for projecting, I guess, is what I did. My own issues, I mean.”

“No, no…” He shook his head at her. “You were only trying to help. Please… you have nothing to be sorry for. That was all me. Rey… I mean it. I’m going to make it up to you somehow.”

Rey smiled and held her hand out. “Shake on it?”

His hand engulfed hers, and she tried to stay in the moment and not make it into something it wasn’t, even with the memories pushing in.

“To better days, huh?” she said.

“To better days.”

She burned the image of his smile into her brain and the warmth of his hand around hers.

And then he was pulling away from the moment.

“I guess I’ve kept you from your party long enough. Walk you back?”

She’d thought she was going to talk the night away with him, and she tried to keep the disappointment from showing on her face when she nodded. But she’d already gotten his apology and his promise to do better, and that was maybe more than enough for now.

Everyone was still inside when they got back to the restaurant.

She smiled at him. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

He nodded. “Message me if… if you need anything.”

“All right. Good night, Ben.”

“Good night, Rey.”

She watched as he slowly walked backwards and away. When he turned around, her breath rattled in her throat and her face crumpled around her smile.

She thought she was perfectly composed when she walked back inside, but maybe it wouldn’t have mattered so much anyway since everybody seemed to be in varying stages of drunkenness. Still, Finn and Rose had very concerned looks on their faces, which soon melted away into relief when she told them in a low voice that things were okay between her and Ben now.

It was easy to smile through the rest of it, but she found she didn’t want to dance anymore, and instead she took pictures of everyone just having a good time. Rose would like having something to remember this night by. And if her fingers slipped a few times and brought back the grainy photo of Ben she’d taken, well, nobody needed to know about that.

Twenty minutes later, her phone rang. Her hand shook when she saw who was calling, and she ran to the washroom where it was quieter. She missed the button a few times before managing to answer the call.

“Ben.”

Did she sound too eager? Her eyes were wide in the mirror above the sink.

“Hey… I… I know we just talked, but I need to know, Rey. Are you… are you with Dameron?”

That wasn’t what she was expecting. But then she didn’t know what she’d been expecting.

“What—do you need to talk to him? He’s still in here somewhere. Should I get—?”

“No, Rey—I mean are you _with_ him? Are you dating him?”

Her heart was once again trying to climb out of her throat. Just what was he asking?

“N-no, he’s a good friend—”

And then she could hear him breathing hard, too—

“Rey, are you with anyone?”

 _“No.”_ It was a little shriek-y, but she was past caring.

“I… I need to show you something. Can I… will you come with me, Rey?”

“What—where are you?”

“Can you come outside the restaurant?”

“Oh… okay… let me just say goodbye—”

She was already out the bathroom door before she even ended the call, and then she was grabbing Rose by the shoulder and muttering her apologies once again, and then the restaurant door was muffling the music as it closed behind her, and she was looking frantically for him—

And there he was down the street and across it, standing by Leia’s car, his eyes so wide in the dim light.

She rushed over. “What is it, Ben?”

“It’s… it’s at Mom and Dad’s house. Can I take you with me?”

Before she could even reply, he was opening the passenger door for her, and she slid right in. He slammed the door behind her, and she saw him rubbing his hand across his mouth as he walked around the front of the car. He didn’t look at her as he stepped on the gas, and the thought lazily floated into her fuzzy head: _This really is Leia’s son._

She looked out her window as he sped through the quiet streets—lights and trees and buildings all a blur outside—finding it impossible to look at him in the oppressive silence.

She slid a few inches forward on her seat when he finally braked right in front of the big house, and then they were making their way up the steps, and he was opening the front door for her. As they walked past the den, she heard Han call out.

“Ben! Did you find—Rey? What are you—?”

Han and Leia’s eyes were dinner plates as they goggled at them, but Ben didn’t even look back. She could only wave weakly at them as she hurried after their son.

Up the stairs, Ben stomped, and then down the hall and into a room, where he finally slowed down and turned around to look at her.

“This was my room when I was a kid.”

She looked around. There was only a single rock band poster on the wall after all, contrary to what she’d expected, but there were a few of swirling galaxies, and a sci-fi movie. And one of a space swordsman, the very same character that was on the shirt still rolled up under her pillow.

On a shelf that covered one side of the room, there were paperbacks, and some books that were in sizes that told her they were probably kids’ picture books. On its own section, there was a small model of the solar system, and block models of space ships in others, and a hundred little plastic characters and even a few stuffed animals. A television. Gaming consoles. A computer on the desk. There was even a guitar in a corner.

Everything she could only have dreamed of as a child.

Ben walked over to the desk and lifted something off of the wall behind it. He placed it in her hands.

“Will you read this, Rey?”

She knew at once what it was: the poem he’d written. The proudest moment of his life, he’d said to his mother. The magazine clipping was old—twenty years old, the date on the top corner said—but the words in his beautiful hand were still very clear:

**The Sapling Dreams**

**O** ver all Creation and beyond the birds that soar,  
**F** ar above the canopy of those that sprung before,  
**T** he fire that the gods lit to bring life to all it kissed  
**H** ad in its survey of its subjects one small sapling missed.  
**E** ver in the shade beneath the towering trees around,  
**L** eaves tiny, trembling, reached up high, yet none but gloom it found.  
**I** n desperate plea, the sapling begged: if Heaven would allow,  
**G** ive it a chance to live! To its surprise, up high, a bough  
**H** eaven in its mercy moved, and through this window came  
**T** he ray of light—a gentle touch that set its hope aflame.

Leia was right. It was a pretty poem, especially for one written by someone barely out of grade school. She could see, even in that early age, just how much he’d wanted to break free, be his own person. How choked and how desperate he must have felt to see his own existence as not-quite-living.

But even as her heart thundered, she wasn’t quite sure why he was showing her this now. And when she tilted her head back to look at him, his eyes—finally, she could see their color again! and so close!—were full of _something_ which shone through the film of moisture.

He chomped on his lips. His throat was working, and she found herself mesmerized by how the protrusion of cartilage moved up and down the pale column. If she leaned forward just a few inches, she could kiss it _—_

But then he spoke.

“Rey… I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Not since I left. You just… haunted me. Just… shifted things inside me, made everything look different…”

His words squeezed the breath out of her. Was he reading her mind? _Just what did he mean? Did she dare hope—?_

She placed the frame on the desk before her shaking hands could drop it.

He continued, “And then last night, when I got here, I saw that… that poem I wrote in fucking middle school—I’d forgotten all about it. But when I read it again, it just struck me… I know I’m a selfish man, Rey, and this might be the last thing you want to hear. But you… you just… fuck, this is going to sound so stupid, but you… you’re like my ray of light, you know? You just make me want to live, in a… in a way I’ve never felt before. Just… I want to know you, _all of you_ , and I want you to know me too. I’m not asking you to save my soul, but I think… I think I need you to help me do it myself. I mean… only if you want it too… I would never—I mean if you’ll give me a chance, Rey… please… _Please.”_

He held his hand out to her. She could see even through the tears in her eyes how tiny tremors ran through his fingers.

_Yes. She dared hope._

She lifted her own hand and wrapped her fingers around his, and it felt like they belonged right there.

And in his soft brown eyes, all her dreams shone right back at her—all that cautious hope, under utter disbelief that this was really happening.

But it _was_ real.

 _“Ben…”_ She was choking on her tears, her happiness.  

His breath was hitching, the tracks of moisture down his cheeks shimmering in the light. He squeezed her fingers.

“Ben… Ben… can I hold you?”

And then he broke free of the soft spell, and he was crushing her, her feet lifting off the floor, and he was finally in her arms, _after all this time_ , his precious head against hers, his warmth and his scent all around her, just as she remembered, but somehow even better. He was sobbing loudly against her neck, and she realized she was doing the exact same thing against his.

And she had to tell him—

“Ben, I missed you so much… I thought I was going crazy.”

“I missed you too, sweetie, so fucking much it hurt every single day—”

“I thought I was never going to see you again—”

“—you were all I thought about—I was in hell, Rey—”

“—and then you sent me that phone and those strawberries but you didn’t say anything—”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me after everything I put you through—”

“I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“Rey… Rey… how could I forget you? You turned my world upside down.”

They cried and gasped and flailed against each other like fish out of water, just trying to get as close to the other as their hands and their lips could allow.

They were a pair of fools, Rey thought.

She grabbed fistfuls of his hair because she wasn’t going to last a second more without kissing him, and there his lips were, wrapping around hers just as desperately—and it wasn’t pretty, and they clacked their teeth and bumped their wet, slippery noses, but it was all so good, and he tasted and felt like and was her heaven.

He brought her feet down to the floor as their kisses slowed, and in between, whenever she let herself open her eyes, she saw how swollen his were, and how red his nose and how blotchy his cheeks.

_Her beautiful Ben._

He was also hard against her, and she could feel herself responding to it. But now was not the time. This was more than enough, swaying against him just like this.

After a while, he loosened his hold on her, and then he was lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe her face, and then his.

He chuckled. Shyly, she thought.

“What a night, huh?” he said.

She brought his face down to hers for another long kiss.

He pulled back after giving her lower lip a last lick. “Let me walk you home, Rey. Before I take you on this goddamn bed.”

She bit her lip he’d just ravaged. She didn’t think that was such a bad idea. And it was exactly for that reason that she nodded.

_Ben was home._

When they stepped out of the room and down the hall, they found Leia and Han trying to sneak their way down the stairs. Rey suddenly remembered they’d left the door open, and she was filled with mortification that _Ben’s parents_ had heard—maybe even seen? gods, _no!_ —the whole thing.

But Ben just said as they overtook them—frozen on the stairs, and trying not to catch their son’s eye—“I’m taking Rey home.”

“Right,” Han said, “we won’t wait up, kid.”

She heard Leia smack his arm.

And then the good lady was saying, “Come to dinner tomorrow, Rey. I’ll roast a chicken. I’ve got a recipe I’ve been wanting to—Han Solo, what the hell are you rolling your eyes for?”

They left the house. As they were walking past the garden, Rey paused. Ben stopped and looked back at her when he noticed.

She smiled at him. “This is where I first heard about you, Ben. I think it was your birthday last year. Your mom and dad… they were talking about you. They just… missed you so much. Lost all hope you’d ever talk to them again.”

His eyes were solemn in the faint light of the garden lamps.

“I’m happy you’re home, Ben.”

His voice was so soft. “So am I, Rey. I should have come home sooner.”

She stepped up to him and brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. His hand wrapped around her hand, and he kissed her fingers.

As they walked down the long driveway, she held his hand, and he told her of how that one big rose bush close to the center of Leia’s garden was planted by Han himself. Leia had given him a white rose boutonniere ages ago, when they were only just starting to see each other, because he took too long to give her flowers, and she’d grown tired of waiting.

She grinned. That sounded exactly like Leia.

“She used to call it her heart… you know… the heart of her garden, and Dad.”

There was a wistful smile on Ben’s face.

He continued, “It wasn’t all bad. It was just… very easy to forget the better times.”

He told her about some of them as they walked slowly, and the sliver of a moon listened to his deep voice, as did the trees, whose leaves had now grown back, just in time to flatter their vanity and change colors—as he talked about Han singing to him when he couldn’t sleep as a little kid—ditties too dirty for his ears, but thankfully he’d been too young to understand—and Han promising him he wouldn’t tell Leia the first time he’d gotten in trouble at school, and Leia crying when he was seven, because for once she was home on his birthday, but then she’d burned the cake she baked for him.

And maybe the gentle wind cooled some of the burning hurt, because she saw he was smiling through his stories.

They got to the cottage, and she stepped up the porch, and under its light, she could once again see the galaxies in his eyes, and the words he bit back. He gave her one last kiss, and stepped back.

But she found she wasn’t ready to say good night quite yet, so she asked—

“Ben… will you come inside?”

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, Ben's back. 
> 
> Hux here wasn't a huge shithead (in that single mention, lol). I figured Snoke was more than enough for the story. And though it wasn't mentioned, Phasma visited Ben too, because why not? And Beebee, I'd wanted to make her either Poe's genius sister or even daughter early on, but there wasn't really anywhere relevant to place her in the story. 
> 
> And we're coming to the end. Just one last chapter, and maybe an epilogue, and maybe if I do end up writing that Ben bit, I might just tag it to the end of this. Not promising anything for now on that last one, though. :) 
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading. My heart's so heavy thinking of how it's almost finished, lols. God, I hate endings--hate reading them, hate even more having to write one. Anyway. Only the best days to all of you. :)


	12. Chapter 12

*******

 

Ben stood at the threshold of Rey’s door, the low light of the lamp softening the angles of his face as he stared back at her. Here was her memories and her dreams of the past weeks made flesh again, her dark woodland prince come home, and the vision made her heart drum a beat that reverberated through the rest of her body. When he closed the door behind him, everything in her sang at the rightness of having him here once more.

She dropped her purse when he pushed her jacket off of her shoulders, and then he took her hands and ran his eyes down her body. Her new dress which she suddenly felt so thankful for, suddenly felt so ridiculously _pretty_ in—a part of her mind smiled back at the universe and its timely little tricks.

“You look so beautiful tonight, Rey.” His deep voice was honey pouring into her ears. “When I saw you at the restaurant earlier, you just… you took my breath away.”

“Well… now you know how I feel every time I look at you.”

He chuckled and pulled her close, and then brought her arms up around his neck. He was so solid in her arms as they held each other in silence, just feeding off of each other’s warmth. The faint trace of his cologne and his own heady scent filled her lungs and made her just that much dizzier on top of everything else that made her so aware of his… _hereness_.

This was no dream.

“I’m just glad you’re not with Dameron. When I saw you in his arms earlier… let’s just say it made me want to break things. Or bones.”

At that, she pulled back, and she felt her face fall at his words. But then his lit up with a grin.

“I was kidding. But you should have seen your face just now.”

“It’s not very funny, Ben.” She took his hand and molded it into a fist, and thought of grown men knocked out cold. Of burning pavilions. The panic at her own throat closed off from breath. “You know why.”

When she looked up at him again, his smile was gone.

“Rey, I wouldn’t have done anything. I… I don’t think I would have.”

But he didn’t sound too sure, which was exactly why she had to remind him of it. He was the one who had the closest seat to the stage of his own rage, after all.

He continued, “I knew that I didn’t have a claim on you. Just… it was a shock seeing fucking Dameron all over you when I wasn’t expecting it.”

She wrapped her mind around the word. Did he have a claim on her now? Did she on him?

“Well,” she said carefully, “if the situation were reversed… if I’d been looking for you and found you with some girl like that… I don’t think I would have liked it, either.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a fly.” His sigh was a little remorseful, a little resigned. “You aren’t me.”

But he was here exactly because he finally wanted to be a little less like that part of him which had grown unchecked in the predatory world he’d lived in over the past decade. Before she could tell him that, though, the lines on the sides of his mouth deepened as his lips stretched into a smile.

“Jealous Rey… strawberry jelly donut Rey… Gotta be honest: I kind of want to see that. You in a catfi—”

She pinched the flesh over his ribs. She wasn’t going to imagine some dimbo clinging like a leech around him. She _wasn’t_. Probably tall and leggy and just as beautiful as he was. Who cares about the women in his past? All those sophisticated, chic city girls. _Not her._ Really.

“Ow, ow—I’m kidding! I mean it would be hot, but—ouch! I’m just kidding, sweetie! Wait, wait! You know what?”

She narrowed his eyes at him, but that only made his eyes dance all the more. He grabbed her face with his hands and gently pushed her cheeks together.

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him how much she loved this playful side of him. Not right now, anyway. Where did all of this hide in the mad jungle of his life in Coruscant?

“What?” she said through lips that were puckered like a trout’s from how he was squishing her face.

“You know what I want to do right now?”

Oh, gods in the seven heavens.

“What?”

He brought his mouth to her ear, as if to impart a great secret, and then he whispered.

“I wanna make out with my girl.”

Her squeezing lungs pushed a weird sound out of her. This man… this man was going to be the death of her. But he wasn’t done. He pulled back a little and brushed her nose with his.

“Are you my girl, Rey?”

His words and the look in his eyes and his breath puffing against her lips made speech impossible. She could only nod her head the tiny bit that her limp neck allowed.

And then he was kissing her again, little teasing touches that was more air and damp than flesh, driving her crazy and making her want more.

“Mm-mmm… and what a sweet girl you are.”

She went up on tiptoes to press closer to him, and finally, finally he deepened the kiss, working his lips and his tongue over hers, brushing against her teeth and her own tongue as she opened up under him. The slick sounds of wet lips smacking softly together and his moans only added to her pleasure.

“Rey… you’ve been my girl since that first time I touched you, haven’t you?”

But his slurred words pierced through the haze, and she found herself pulling back.

“Well… no, Ben. I wasn’t. You scared me so much.”

The soft cloud over his eyes seemed to lift as well, and in the sudden clarity, he looked devastated.

“I’m sorry. You’re right… I’m sorry.”

He held her close again, each exhalation of breath against her hair, each tremor in his arms echoing his remorse. Maybe she should have just let it be. Did she say the wrong thing?

“I just… I keep saying the wrong thing, don’t I?” he murmured against the top of her head.

Was this man reading her mind?

“No, wait… Ben, no. You’ve already said sorry for that.”

She rubbed his back to reassure him that she was okay with it now. But that didn’t feel like it was enough, so she cupped his face and pulled him down so she could kiss all over it, his eyes and his nose and his downturned mouth the beacons for her lips.

“Maybe… maybe when you let me wash your back?”

He looked at her, his eyes as round and as somber as those puppies’ whose pictures Rose would sometimes show her from when she visited the pound.

“Or… when you taught me how to play rummy? I’m not sure…”

His mouth was slowly softening, the wrinkles on his chin smoothing out a little.

“Or maybe when you… shared cocoa with me? No?”

The heat was slowly returning to his eyes.

“Or… when you didn’t say no when I… when I threw myself at you… I think maybe then, for sure?”

His arms tightened around her once more, and he pressed his forehead to hers.

“I couldn’t have said no to you, Rey… wanted you too much.”

He pressed a quick, hard kiss to her lips.

“When you locked yourself in the bathroom that morning… fuck, I wanted to break the door down. Just bend you over the sink and take you right there. You have no idea, Rey… If you’d said something right then…”

Her bones were jelly. The failed kind that had too much water and crumbled at the softest jiggle. She pressed her face to his chest, which she was sure was red from the memory.

“I wish I’d known that you… that you knew. I mean—I don’t know what I would have done, but—”

He made a sound which was somewhere between a laugh and a moan, and then he lifted her up. In her surprise, she wrapped her legs around him by instinct, and her shoes slipped off her feet. That opened her up to that part of him that strained towards her, and the contact made her shiver.

He walked to the bed with breathy grunts that she knew was more from what he was feeling than her weight on him. She slid down his body to stand on the bed, and he sighed at the friction. The few inches the bed gave her on him didn’t make her feel much bigger as his broad shoulders and thick arms crushed her to him.

“Ohh, Rey… I was half-hard all day that day, trying not to think of fucking you on every surface of this place. Do you know how hard it is to hide a boner?”

She gasped at his admission and pressed a whimpered little laugh on his hair—which had its own intoxicating cocktail from his shampoo and the scent that rose from his scalp. He grabbed her elbows and pulled back a little, seeking her eyes.

“Are you—is this making you uncomfortable? You have to tell me if what I’m saying or doing is too much.”

His candidness made her twitchy, but not in the way he was maybe thinking. Wasn’t it obvious?

“No, I… I really like it.”

“Really? You like it?” She could hear the pleased smugness in his voice.

“It’s… it’s h-hot.”

She squirmed against him. It was one thing to like having him tease her this way, but it was another to have him witness just how flustered it made her.

“Mm-mmm, Rey…”

“I mean I kind of get it now, what Jess—what my friends were talking about. They’d say stuff sometimes, but I thought it was just… you know… how girls talk sometimes. It was just… funny.”

“Yeah? What do they say?”

It was very distracting how he kept kneading her butt and nuzzling her neck, and her brain struggled to put her thoughts into words. Not that she wanted him to stop.

“I… just… like buttering muffins? Or… or… climbing trees… I don’t know—!”

He laughed.

“It doesn’t have to be vague or weird like that, sweetie. Like… do you know what I really want to do right now, Rey Kenobi?”

She really, _really_ liked it when he told her just what he wanted.

“What?”

“I want to unbutton your pretty little dress and look at your tits. Will you show me your tits, Rey?” His words rolled into a growl.

She let out a sharp breath. Somehow her trembling fingers managed to slip the buttons free of their holes down her dress, and then her bra’s front clasp was undone too. When her hands stilled in a sudden last-second bout of shyness, he lifted his own to her shoulders and brushed her dress and the straps of her bra down to her elbows. His eyelids were weighed down by want as he looked at what he uncovered.

“Hey there, sweeties… I’ve missed you.”

He leaned forward to give the peaks a barely-there kiss each, and they puckered instantly in welcome.

“Mm-mmm, just as I remember.”

A gasp bubbled out of her as he flicked his tongue across one of her nipples. He straightened up when he heard the sound and stole more of her air with an open-mouthed kiss on her lips, which then slowly feathered its way down her chest, his slightly chapped lips plucking at her nerves.

His hands cupped under the small mounds, and his tongue laved a wet path along the side of one, but even just that was more than enough to make her cry out.

He sank into a sitting position on the bed, and she melted right along with him, his spread knees pushing her legs open as she straddled him. The angle opened her up right above his hardness, and the sensation of having only the thin barrier of her panties over his dark jeans made her slick walls throb.

He pushed her dress down to her waist and freed her arms, and she threw them around his head to steady herself against the sharp inner tugs between her legs. His tongue fluttered over her nipple, and she found her hips moving in a frantic rhythm, his hands digging into them as he ground against her. Little mewling noises spilled from her lips as he licked and suckled, goose bumps breaking over her breasts as the air dried his saliva from her skin.

“So responsive... just wanna make you feel good all night.”

The rough friction against her core drew out even more of her moisture, and she could feel just how soaked her underwear was becoming.

“Ben… ahh… please—”

He wrapped his lips around a hard peak and sucked hard, and the sharp sensation made her stiffen as a sudden pulsing wave of familiar pleasure washed over her. She cried out.

Her nipple popped free, his lips a wet O right next to it as they looked at each other in shock. It would have been a funny sight if she hadn’t been so surprised.

“Did you just…? Just from that?”

“I… I think so.”

He groaned. “What are you doing to me, Rey? Are you really trying to kill me here?”

She felt like she could die right now, herself. She had no idea that that was even possible. Was she really that desperate for sex? For _him_? Her face was on fire. What would Ben think of her now?

“Is… is it so weird?”

He laughed as he squeezed her in his arms, and he planted kisses all over her breasts and then all the way up her mouth.

“Weird? It was fucking beautiful, you… you… perfect little… cherry-topped sugar cakeling…”

_Cherry-topped… sugar cakeling?_

“What’s a… _cakeling?_ ”

“I dunno… you’re just too fucking sweet. Rey… do you know how lucky I feel right now, huh?”

Her little orgasm only made his kisses taste sweeter, his hands moving up and down her bare back more deliciously rough. He shuffled backwards, dragging her with him, so he could lean on the wall on the other side of the bed. He reached for her pillow, and suddenly she remembered—

“Wait, wait—Ben!” She grabbed his outstretched arm. “Just—close your eyes first!”

“Wha—why?”

“Please—”

He slid his eyelids closed, so tight that his nose scrunched along with it—thank heavens—but as she moved to reach under the pillow, he grabbed her hips and they both spilled to their sides. He looked up at her from their awkward position, his face right between her breasts as her hand closed around the thing under her pillow. He looked at her suspiciously.

“Are you hiding something from me?”

She bit her lip. How the hell was she going to explain this?

She sighed. She’d been found out anyway, so there was no point in lying.

“Just… Fine. It’s just… I kept…”

She pulled the shirt out from under the pillow. _His shirt._ Which she’d never washed, and which she’d been sniffing every night since he left. Like a total heartsick lunatic.

His head tilted back so he could see above him, and a toothy smile stretched across his face as he recognized it.

“Is that… the shirt you lent me? You had it on your bed all this time? You’ve been _sleeping_ with it?”

She moaned and covered her face with the damn thing so she could at least hide from the amused look in his eyes.

“Sweetheart, don’t be embarrassed about it, come on…”

He shimmied upwards so they were face to face again, and he plopped a little kiss on her lips.

“If my head wasn’t such a mess when I left, I would have totally stolen your panties, you know.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “The ones you had on when I got you wet and bothered.”

“You wouldn’t have!”

“Uh-huh. Then I would have had more than just the thought of you in my h—in my mind to sustain me. I would have had it on me the whole time. Tucked it in my waistband through all my hearings. My very own Rey-flavored lucky charm, hmm.”

 _Flavored?_ His smile was pure lech.

“On second thought, that might have been bad after all. If anyone had taken it—bloody murder. Then I’d never have gotten out.”

“Thank the prophets, then. I would have missed you too much. Probably.”

She yelped when his hand landed heavily on her bottom cheek. The sound of his palm on her half-exposed skin rang through the room. His fake pout was very cute. _Too_ cute.

“Probably?”

“Okay, okay. Definitely. I would have pined for you for a long time.” The smile slid off her face. “A very, very long time, Benjamin Solo.”

His eyes were tender right before they closed, and then he was kissing her again, just as softly. His deep, content breaths blew over her face, and she found herself nibbling on his lips, smoothing her bites with little licks.

“I think I lied,” she told him.

“About what?”

“Those strawberries you gave me—” she pressed little kisses on him as she spoke “—they weren’t the best thing I’ve had in my mouth.”

He moaned against her, and then ran his thumb over her lips.

“When you say things like that, Rey…”

“Yeah…?”

She sucked his thumb into his mouth, and he let out a shuddering breath.

“It makes me think of your pretty lips wrapped around… something else.”

She slipped off of his thumb. “I don’t know how to do it, though.”

“You need a teacher.”

“Do you know anyone who’s available?”

A sharp bark of laughter escaped him.

“Come here, you witch.”

His tongue desperately plundered her mouth, and when she chased it back with her own, he moaned.

“I would love for you to suck my cock, Rey. I’ve fantasized about it for weeks. Is that too much? But only if you want it, too. You don’t _have_ to do it.”

That last part felt familiar, and the memory of their fight over it the last time made her push him onto his back. She wasn’t going to question her sudden courage. She just straddled his midsection and bent over him so she could move her arms under his neck. He wrapped his own around her.

“Ben… you were so good to me last time. Like… like you lit up everything inside me, beyond anything I ever expected or imagined I could feel. Just… it would make me happy to have you feel anything like that, too.”

His arms squeezed her tight.

“Ohh, my sweet girl… but you _did_ make me feel the same, don’t you know? Rey, listen…”

He cupped her face so he could look at her.

“I… I don’t do this a lot. Seriously, I’ve had a better relationship with my right hand than any of the people… you know.”

His huff of laughter sounded nervous.

“What I’m saying is, whenever it happened, it was always just… you know… release. Like… a transaction. Well… not exactly that, but… you just came into it all prepared, with a goal to be met. I mean… you know me—I’m not great with people. It just wasn’t something I was looking for or thought I needed.”

The earnestness in his face was compelling. Was he saying he’d never had an actual relationship with anyone before? Never cared enough for anyone like that before? She didn’t know if she was relieved or sad.

He continued, “But just that short time with you… you say I was good to you, but really… it was because for the first time in my life, somebody made me want to do something more than just… get off and get the other person off. More than just… I don’t know… transactional reciprocation.”

His wry smile at his own silly terminology made her own lips twitch.

“Watching you—making you feel good made _me_ feel good… made me want to keep doing it. It’s… it’s hard to explain, but do you get what I mean?”

Rey felt like glass being blown, expanding and soft in the heat of his emotions. But really, that last part was like listening to someone explain her own feelings to her. How could they mirror each other so perfectly? She kissed his jaw in wonder.

“I do, Ben. But really, I just want to suck your cock, too. I didn’t get a chance the last time.”

It was only the truth, but that made Ben laugh again.

“Let’s clear our work area, Teacher.”

She wiggled downwards until her bottom rested on his thighs, and then pushed his shirt up so it bunched up under his armpits. For a long moment, she could only look at the expanse of flesh, pale skin dotted here and there with the same markings as those on his face, stretched over softly rippling muscles. The man under her was just pure eye candy.

His chuckle snapped her out of her trance, and only then did she realize that she was smiling stupidly as she ogled him.

“What?” he asked.

Rey had noticed over the recent years that there were two things in life that made her mindless with the desire to get her hands on them. One was… food, and she was lucky to have sat in front of good spreads since coming here—particularly Maz’s or Mr. Tico’s. Another was the popped hood of a well-made car, and Han’s pre-War classics, which he’d been generous enough to let her look at a few times, practically made her giddy.  

And now, she was discovering this very delectable third.

“You’re just…” She gestured at him with her hands and shook her head. “I don’t know if I want to take photos or… squish you with my hands or… bite you everywhere.”

He reached for her hands and placed them on his chest.

“This should do… for starters. You can touch me, Rey. Anywhere you want.”

He laced his fingers together on top of his head, and the movement contoured his flesh even better. She slowly moved her palms and traced the lines of his torso, watching his muscles jump. The dip at the very center of his chest was the perfect receptacle for a kiss, and so she placed one there, right over his heart.

She looked up at him so she could say the next words to his face.

“You’re just… beautiful, Ben.”

His eyes shone back at her, and there was a small smile on his lips.

“Now you know what it’s like whenever I see you.”

Funny guy. Throwing her words right back at her.

She saw the edge of his scar and tilted her head to see it better. The memory of the horrible bloody gash that split his flesh open was very fresh on her mind, and she was glad to see that it was now nothing more than a rough line of puckered pink skin across the side of his ribs. Her fingers traced it.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Only in my head, sometimes.”

She leaned down to kiss it—this thing that at least in part brought Ben to her and kept him here for a little while.

And then she moved her lips across his chest, and his brown nipple was right there, and so she kissed that too, and flicked her tongue across it for good measure. The muscles on his stomach jumped at the contact—did he just _giggle?_ —and she kissed down the middle of it, over his belly button, and further down the shallow trench that led to a line of hair that tickled her lips and led to… other places.

From here, it was impossible to miss how he was straining against his jeans. When she looked up at him, she saw that his eyes were closed and that his hand was in a tight fist over the bridge of his nose. His breaths were escaping unevenly through his mouth.

She placed her hands on the waistband of his jeans.

“May I?”

He squirmed under her and opened his eyes.

“Please.”

Her eyes never left his as she undid his button and pulled his zipper down, and she watched as his face worked at the sensation.

But she had to look down to see what she’d just uncovered, and there he was, framed between the halves of his open fly, stretching the material of his black underwear sideways. That must _not_ be comfortable. She squeezed her knees against his at the sight. He grunted when she slowly brushed the backs of her fingers over it.

_“Reyyy…”_

“How do I… how do you want me to—?”

His hand took hers and opened it over himself, and he rocked against the contact. She wrapped her fingers more firmly around him, and he moved them up and down under his shaking hand, groaning at the friction. She thought she felt a hint of wetness on the stretched cloth, but she couldn’t be sure. She _wanted_ to be sure—she wanted to fucking examine every single inch of him, not having had the chance to do so the last time. And so with the help of her other hand, she pulled at the elastic of his waistband.

And there he was in all of his glory, sprung free from the confines of boxer briefs.

He gasped and caught the base of it in his fingers. There was an instant visceral reaction in her gut at the sight. This was _her Ben_ , and she wanted him inside her. Her mouth, her clenching pussy—she just _wanted him_. She thought of how he’d stretched her, of the pain and the pure pleasure of it, and he hadn’t even bottomed out back then. She wasn’t even sure if it was possible, looking at him now. The idea of how hard it will be to get _all of this_ inside her just made her perversely want it all the more, and her body was squeezing out a damned _lake_ in anticipation.

“How did you ever fit inside me, Ben?”

He laughed again. “We got you nice and wet first, babe. I’ll remind you just how in a bit.”

She wasn’t wrong about the moisture after all. Even as she watched, he wrapped his hand around the base, and a bead of liquid pushed out the head of his cock and dripped down the side, catching on the veins that ridged its surface. She realized she didn’t have to _wonder_ just what that tasted like because it was _right there_ and she could just—

He cried out when she dipped forward and caught the liquid with her tongue.

“ _Shit_ —give a guy a warning, sweetie— _ohh_ —”

The rest of his words bubbled away as she licked up his shaft, and against her chin, she could feel his hand tightening around himself. Did she do that wrong?

“Just like that, Rey… lick it just like that. Get comfy with it.” She could see him gritting his teeth. “We can take our time.”

She listened and followed as he grunted out just how he wanted it, pressed her tongue where his words and his moans and his gasps told her it was good, until his shaft shone with her spit. And when she finally popped the head into her mouth, she could feel the shudders that racked his entire body.

There was no point of comparison for how he tasted, and so her mind simply registered this flavor as _Ben_. When his hand flew off of himself to grab her hair, hers took over, and in her hand his manhood was just as hard and solid and velvety and perfect as the rest of him.

“Just a little deeper, baby—please—”

But it wasn’t easy, and there was so much of him, and at one point he hissed something about her teeth—and she almost stopped in mortification as the memories of all the times she’d been teased about them in school—even Finn called her _Toofs_ , if affectionately. But then his fingers brushed against her cheek, and he was telling her—

“So good, Rey—feels so fucking good—”

And as he undulated under her—like a mesmerizing creature of the sea gliding through the water—she understood that this must be what he meant earlier when he said it pleased him to please her. His need was simply beautiful to behold, and she didn’t want to ever stop seeing and feeling him like this.

But apparently, he did, and his hand tightened its grip on her hair and pulled her gently back. And she wondered why, but then he was saying—

“Baby… I’m not gonna last if we keep this up. Need to slow down. C’mere.”

She shimmied up, and he caught her against him. When his rumpled shirt—still gathered under his armpits—brushed against her nipples, she remembered she’d been half-naked all this time, but she’d been too absorbed with learning the taste of him that she forgot to be embarrassed about it. She had a second to see how his eyes were cloudy with desire and his cheeks red from it before he was kissing her again and asking between kisses just why she was so good to him.

“Dunno … maybe I’m just sweet on you.”

He laughed against her lips at her old-timey words.

“Soon I’ll be sweet _in_ you.”

He pushed his erection against her belly for emphasis, and her cheeks burned.

“Yes, please.”

“Pop quiz.”

“Wha—right now?”

“Are you questioning your teacher?”

She smiled. “No, sir.”

“Okay. What does Rey and a cupcake have in common?”

“Teacher likes them both.”

“Teacher does like them both, but the answer is—the best kind is filled with cream.”  

His words made her moan. From both the urge to facepalm and how the mental image melted her bones.

But then his hands froze on her back, and she felt him stiffening under her. His silence was not the comfortable kind. She pulled back to look at him, and his eyes were round with… worry?

“What’s wrong?”

He bit his lips and puffed them in that way of his.

“I just… I just remembered… I don’t have anything on me.”

What was he—? _Oh._ She couldn’t help the wave of disappointment that washed over her.

“Gods… I’m so sorry, sweetie… I just wasn’t expecting—I didn’t think we’d—”

It was ridiculous to be selfish about this, and so she swallowed her disappointment and placed her finger on his lips.

“Shh. What are you saying sorry for, you doof? Neither of us were. We’ll just… get some later. There’s always tomorrow for that.”

And it was true, and the sudden realization that she didn’t have Ben just now, but for the days to come… it made her heart swell. What they had now wasn’t just for tonight. It wasn’t some firelit fantasy. Not a bad-weather escape from her loneliness. He was no longer just a desperate dream fueled by memory and the fading scent on a worn shirt. He was _home_ , and he was _hers_.

But the timing of this realization could have been better, because he took one look at her moist eyes and gathered her in his arms instantly, peppering her face with apologetic kisses—

“Rey, sweetheart, don’t cry, we can still—”

It was cute how he misunderstood her happy tears for dismay, but before she could explain it to him, he was flipping her on her back and then sitting up to take his shirt and shoes off. And then he was pulling her dress and her panties down, and there was nothing to do but lift her ass off the bed to help him.

“Nowhere near done with you tonight…”

In the next moment he was planting soft kisses on the inside of her knees and working his way slowly up. His hand rubbed her thighs and her hips, and then he was pushing her legs open. She went up on her elbows and watched him as he rested his cheek against her inner thigh and looked between her legs, and the heat in his eyes burned away her embarrassment.

He brushed his fingers against the sides of her weeping slit, just barely-there touches that rustled her hair and tickled. And then he was spreading her lips, and she could feel herself twitch under his gaze. When he blew a puff of air at her, her breath exited her lungs in a forceful exhale.

“My girl’s just pretty everywhere, aren’t you?”

He bent forward to kiss her right there, and his tongue gave her a little flick at the end—but it was just a little tease and he was moving back again, not quite done with watching his fingers spread her moisture around, right up to her clit. But he wasn’t pressing hard enough, even when her hips chased his fingers, and she just wanted _more_.

And then he was licking her slick off of his fingers and telling her how he can’t get enough of how she tasted. And he gathered more of her moisture again, lifted off of her a little and pushed his fingers into her own mouth—

“What do you think?”

She didn’t know what to think, in fact, as she sucked her own juices off of his fingers. But it seemed he wasn’t looking for an answer, anyway, as he went right back into spreading her—but now his tongue was joining in, and her elbows buckled and her eyes rolled back—

And he was slow but very thorough, his tongue shapeshifting against her to lick her firmly from bottom to top or to dig into her folds or flutter softly over her clit. He must know just how good he was, but she told him anyway, and to reward her honesty he pushed his fingers right in, pushing against the ache, and it was even better—and after just a few strokes she was flying off that cliff again, moaning his name because that was the only thing that she knew in the moment.

But it seemed he wasn’t quite done yet. Before her breathing settled back to normal, he was pulling her legs up higher on his shoulders, lifting her ass clear off the bed, and his mouth moved from laying down gentle kisses along the creases where her legs met her body right back over her pussy.

And he was suckling and laving so much more intensely, like his life depended on it—hers did, for sure—and his fingers were pumping into her in a hard rhythm—and he was hitting some place inside her that just set fire to her nerves and made her muscles squeeze desperately, the perverse wet sounds drowned out only by her wails—she was coiling tighter, tighter, her entire being clenched around him—

—and she was coming again, and screaming as the pressure released, thought and breath and sight drowned out by the deluge of sensation.

He held her and kissed her and rubbed his hands up and down her back, and his words—“Such a good girl—my beautiful girl”—slowly penetrated the haze. And she realized she was crying, her entire body shaking in his arms, and her own words wanted to pour out of her soul, but it was hard to breathe as it was—

And maybe that was a good thing. She lay limp and tried to catch her breath and come back to her senses, and when her mind was working again, she thought that those words can come later, after time fleshed out the jumbled mass of feelings she had for him more clearly.

He probably knew already, anyway.

And so she kissed his damp shoulders, and his jaw, and his plump lips which still tasted of her. And she touched him back, the same sure caresses he was giving her, ran her hands over his warm skin and tangled her fingers through his hair.

And when he pressed against her belly, still hard, just like all those weeks ago, after lighting her up and sending her flying and exploding over the sky like fireworks—her generous lover, her selfless Ben—she forced her mind to process a little detail, something she'd learned over the last few weeks in her loneliness-induced temporary insanity, and then she knew what she wanted to do.

But she had to convince him first.

“Ben, listen…”

He looked at her, his brown eyes warm, and she swallowed. This was not going to be easy.

“We… we’ve been careful all this time, and… I want you to know how thankful I am that you’re just so considerate about… about everything, really. But… it’s a good week, and… I’ve always been regular so I’m… fairly certain. And… we could go out in the morning to… to get something for… after.”

She watched as confusion danced over his face.

“So… if you want, we could… you know… do it properly.”

He let out a sharp exhale at her words and squirmed against her.

“You mean… without…?”

“Only if—I mean only if you want it, too.”

He buried his face in her neck, and for a long moment, he stayed that way, holding her tight against his body, tense but still.

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea after all. They could just wait.

“Ben, it’s okay—I understand it’s a risk.” She kissed his ear. “I just thought… if you wanted it, too, but… We don’t have to, really.”

“Rey…” His voice was rough against her ear. “I do want it. I want you so much—maybe too much. I… dream about you, and I wake up needing you so bad—all these weeks. Just… I know we’ve gone through this already, but I just want you to be sure. This is your body, Rey. But… if anything happens… sweetheart, just know that I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of us.”

He would, she was sure of it. He would sometimes talk about how selfish he was, but… outside of their misunderstandings, he’d been so good to her. She realized now that she wouldn’t care for him this much if he hadn’t been.

She pushed his jeans and his underwear off of him, and he was rough silk against her legs. When she lifted her knee over his hip, his hand followed the movement, slid up her thigh slowly—almost reverently—and settled on her ass cheek.

“I… I’ve never done it without.” His eyes slid closed at his confession, and a little laugh escaped him. “Rey, I don’t even know if I’ll last.”

She kissed him. “I just want you, Ben. I don’t need to… you know… again.”

He opened his eyes and chomped on his lips, and she could feel him positioning himself at her opening, but he wouldn’t push in quite yet. He used his hand to slide the head of his cock up and down her slit, teasing her to get her juices flowing for him again—and really, it wasn’t a difficult undertaking.

She encouraged him with words moaned against his mouth, told him how she liked it when he was so hard like this, how easily he made her wet, how good he’d made her feel the last time he fucked her, how she spent the past few weeks frustrated because her fingers weren’t as good as him.

She was ready for him.

“Please—inside me, Ben—”

He pushed himself into her, and there was a look of tormented concentration on his face, and he was stretching her a little painfully, a lot deliciously, just a slow, wet glide that made her whimper. It was just so different from the last time, and if it felt like this for her, she could only imagine what it was doing to him, and so she was careful to stay still.

He was a slab of tension against her body as he tried to get a handle on the moment, a glacier moving torturous and slow over her valley. But gradually, he picked up the pace, and when he brushed his thumb against her aching bud, she clamped around his cock, and it was just _good_ , and he wasn’t letting up—rubbing and pumping a little faster and hitting spots inside her that made her quake—

“… feels so good—so full of you— _Ben_ —”

He pushed her to her back and wrapped her legs around his waist, and he was pistoning into her, each stroke coming in deeper from this angle, pushing her up the bed and making her squeal—and he was finally giving her a proper _fucking_.

He was trying to make her come again, she was sure of it, because his fingers were desperately mashing against her clitoris as he pounded away into her—and sure enough—

“Can you come for me, sweetie? Please? Need you to come for me—”

And maybe his choked plea did the trick, or maybe it was his pinching fingers, but she was coming again, and it felt like her entire body was clenching around and milking his cock, and she was just breathless in her pleasure—

And he was close, too, and she knew it from how he impossibly sped up even more, just mindlessly hammering into her now.

And then he lost his own control, and she could feel him spurting inside her as he buried his cock deep for the last time and tried to keep it there. He was just this shaking, twitching, gasping creature above her, hot and damp from head to foot, his desperate fingers squeezing her wherever they came into contact, teeth sinking into her neck and shoulders—and she knew she would have bruises in the morning.

She ached everywhere, but it was a sweet kind of ache, the kind that almost didn’t know itself from pleasure. Even spent, he still felt huge inside her. He was a dead weight on top of her, and the thought floated into her head, how funny it was that they went right back to him knocking the breath out of her—he’d been good at that from the very beginning.

He was so still, even as she ran her boneless fingers through his sweaty hair and kissed his shoulder, that she wondered if he’d passed out.

But he hadn’t, because he hoarsely whispered—

“I love you, Rey Kenobi.”

And she thought she was full, but she was filling up again—tears and happiness overflowing from her eyes and her heart.

And maybe it was just the little desert girl in her that equated time with certainty, after all, too used to waiting for the good things that never came. But she was in her green paradise now, so far from that desert, and here was _her Ben_ , the good thing—the _best_ thing—that was here to stay.

And so the words spilled out of her soul, after all—

“I love you too, Benjamin Solo.”

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand this is a good stopping place. The story is pretty much done, but we will definitely have some kind of epilogue. This chapter has been so exhausting to write, lol. I planned to have this finished two days ago, but who would have thought that fluffy smut, of all things, would give you the worst writing fatigue? 
> 
> But I just want to thank you all for staying on till the end. Your comments really did give me more feels than I ever expected, hahah. I am just happy that you guys enjoyed this. So from the bottom of my Reylo heart, just... THANK YOU. <3 <3 <3


	13. An (Unnecessary) Epilogue (Of Sorts), Part 1

*******

 

If anybody asked Benjamin Solo why—after surviving years of being Andrew Snoke’s psychological punching bag, after facing death just a few short months ago at the hands of the very same, after a weeks-long stay in jail as a result of that entire disaster—just _why_ a nervous tremor was running so visibly through his closed hand as it hovered over the door that had welcomed him so often in the last week, they would have found him too busy trying to keep his lunch down to even begin processing the question.

But if he’d been absolutely pressed for an answer, he’d say it probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was the Harvest Festival, and the first one in his entire adult life that he was spending with his family.

His _family_.

The holiday hadn’t meant much in the past years, and had simply been blessed rest from work, a chance to turn his brain off for a few days. But now…

It was its own brand of torture, this anticipation borne of a wish for things to go well instead of the old urge to upend everything in sight in a wash of anger at the very thought of _that_ word.

He’d tried hard over the last few weeks to remind himself that what once was terrifying waters—the very sea that he’d avoided for so long because of the monsters he’d been so sure were in it—was now merely unfamiliar, if still painfully so.

He wasn’t feeling very brave.

But Rey… _Rey_. She would be there with him. Which was exactly why he was here, on her porch, trying to bring his knuckles down upon her door on what should have been the simple act of knocking, if he could just get himself together.

His girl. His anchor.

The Organa-Solos had slaved away through the early afternoon in Leia’s well-appointed kitchen, getting everything ready for their three guests. Even though Rey was the easiest person to please when it came to food, he’d found himself wanting to try extra hard to impress her tonight, especially since Chewie and Maz were bringing their town-famous barbecued ribs and whatever other magical things Maz whipped up just for tonight.

Upon learning that Rey hadn’t had much fish or seafood, he decided on some baked garlicky, citrusy salmon—which was now just waiting to be popped in the oven as soon as he got back—as well as the shrimp that was already soaking up its ginger and coconut sauce.

And maybe the fact that he felt like he was cooking for a date even though it was a family dinner wasn’t helping his nerves any, either.

There had been a steady trickle of anxious energy through this new life from the very beginning, but this particular flood began flowing in earnest earlier in the day. Cooking side by side with his parents had been… something. Amidst their attempt at light-hearted conversation, Han had somehow managed to convince Leia to stay away from anything that required use of the oven, putting her in charge of the salads and the cold meats.

Ben thought she’d put up a fuss, and he hadn’t known what to do with the conspiratorial wink his dad threw his way behind his mom’s head, but before he could even understand what was happening, his mom was sending him her own I-know-perfectly-well-what-this-is wink, and he’d felt his betraying mouth stretch into a nervous grin.

He hadn’t known what to do, either, all the mornings of this past week that he’d been home—just another in a series of truly surreal weeks—when he’d wake up to his mom tapping her tiny knuckles on the door of the spare room he’d taken—it was impossible to relax, let alone sleep, in his old bedroom with his childhood staring back at him—and call him down to the breakfast that his dad made.

They would sit at the kitchen table, and he’d steal glances at his parents and wonder about the time that took them from being the vital, busy people they’d been—always in a rush to be everywhere but _here_ —to these grey folks in their pajamas next to him that sipped on coffee and grazed on toast as if they were on a balcony overlooking a Naboo lake. It was a lot like trying to make sense of a slide viewer with so many of the frames from its reel missing.

They’d talk in their early morning voices of all the many little nothings of the past day and the one that was just starting. As if he wasn’t almost thirty-four and trying to fix the terrible mess that was his life. As if he wasn’t out of a job. As if he had any idea at all what he wanted to do now.

As if he hadn’t spent the last fifteen years marinating in rage at these two people, who now made him pancakes and bacon, who were wise enough to not crowd him with hugs again after he’d stiffened in their arms that first night they’d visited him in jail, but would now casually but very deliberately brush against his long hair with gentle, barely-there hands as they passed behind him on their way to the fridge—things almost remembered from so long ago, but he couldn’t be sure if they didn’t happen or he’d blocked his memories of them so effectively.

He’d wrapped his mouth around his father’s cooking, and his mind around the words _Mom_ and _Dad_ , which he’d once again taken to calling them, for a lack of any other form of direct address.

He was surprised to find that conversation wasn’t as torturous as he’d thought it was going to be. His parents had always been talkers, and they would chatter on about things at work around his silence. His heart would always feel a little thrill whenever Han brought Rey up, and the knowing looks his dad gave him never failed to make his cheeks warm.

They didn’t press him too much about his plans going forward—and it was a good thing, because really, he still didn’t know. He managed to volunteer bits and pieces of his life through the years without clamming up too much, and he found himself taking in their own little stories almost like someone stumbling upon a feast who hadn’t realized he’d been starving for so long.

But the most disorienting thing he was discovering was that spending all this time with them felt far from bad. If anything, the ease in which he’d fallen in with this routine was what made him the most anxious. Because really, did he just waste all those years staying away, when it could have been like this all this time, after all?

Maybe it was because of everything that had happened over the past few months. Maybe his parents had simply mellowed. Maybe it was because he wasn’t looking at them anymore from an angry teen’s eyes, and they weren’t treating him like one.

His parents’ bickering now sounded almost funny, a dynamic between them made natural by those mysterious in-between years, instead of how it had felt like waves of hot words and cold resentment to his confused ears as a child.

Regardless of the reason, it was clear that things were now very different. He was still a mess—and Doctor Ackbar had said in their first meeting on Thursday that these things took time—but the world didn’t seem so black and white anymore, and it was already easier to process things without losing his head too much.

Maybe, too, because of Rey. Where once he ran to rage as his one reliable ally and bent the will of anyone who opposed him with it, she was now here to hold his hand through the confusing emotions—everything else that the anger had eclipsed for so long. She was at once soft and strong, with her eyes and her hands and her words and her conviction that he can work through this, which he was discovering was exactly what he needed right now. A single fucking week with her, and it felt like he’d known her all his life. Like he’d been depending on her forever to moor him.

It was a dangerous thought, he knew, relying so much on one person that way.

But as he stood in front of her door, his galloping heart made sure that he couldn’t deny that right now, he needed her badly.

If he didn’t have Rey… if he hadn’t met her… if he hadn’t come this way that time…

 

*******

 

That traitorous organ did its best to pound its way out of his chest even more urgently that one night an eternity ago.

It felt like he’d been driving all night, but in reality it probably hadn’t even been an hour. It was close to midnight, which meant the roads were relatively clear—the single good thing the entire night. Still, he expected the sound of sirens to come any second as he sped away, and he couldn’t even think of what he’d do if he was stopped for speeding.

He was almost out of the city, headed to gods knew where. All that mattered was to get away, and get away fast.

His phone wouldn’t stop buzzing in his pocket, but his frazzled mind couldn’t handle that right now on top of the explosive pain on his side and the need to keep his eyes on the road and his foot on the gas pedal. It couldn’t be anyone else but Snoke, and where just earlier tonight his fear of the man had been more for the preservation of the only life he’d known to live in the past decade, now his raw terror was of the mortal kind.

His boss had always been a powerful man, and in fact it was exactly that which had drawn him in and made him stay through the mind games that went far beyond manipulation and right into psychological domination. The man was a master of his own fate, and Kylo had craved more than anything that same control over his own life. And Snoke had helped him see that his rage could be a tool, if he could learn to channel it. That he’d risen up the ranks, he’d taken as proof that Snoke was right, and the taste of his success overshadowed whatever misgivings he might have had.

But that demon had almost killed him. He’d been as loyal as a dog to him all these years—Snoke’s own words, which he was fond of reminding Kylo—and yet the man had had no qualms at all when he lifted the nozzle of that gun to him after killing that other guy. So much like he’d done it before.

He knew perfectly well he wasn’t out of danger yet, and didn’t know if he’d ever be. His only hope was to disappear. Andrew Snoke had few virtues, and forgiving was just another thing that he wasn’t.

He didn’t even know where to go now, but his apartment was out of the question. He’d almost driven past the supermarket when it registered, and with a squeal of brakes, he swung into its parking lot, which was almost completely empty. A small delivery truck was parked a few spots away, and he couldn’t see anything through its passenger window in the dark, but nothing seemed to be moving inside it. It looked like it had been there for a while.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and powered it off with a trembling hand—now that he thought about it, he should have done that sooner—and when it slipped from his shaking fingers and clattered to the floor, he didn’t bother picking it up.

And then he took a full minute to just _breathe_.

That became impossible again when he tried lifting his button-up shirt to have a look at his seeping side. He couldn’t see much, but he could feel that the blood had started to congeal and was now stuck to the cloth. Oh, yes, he could definitely feel that.

But he couldn’t take too long, and so he dropped his shirt and bit his lip through the agony as he shrugged on the sweater that was on the passenger seat. Even if he bled through it, at least the material was dark, and it wouldn’t show so much if he was careful.

As he climbed out of his car and tried to look like he wasn’t going insane with the pain in case someone _was_ looking, he made a mental list of just what he needed to get. And maybe it was because he was trying to tamp down the paranoia that was clouding his thoughts, and because his eyes were darting all across the parking lot, checking for any kind of movement, that he missed it: he barely got past his mind screaming _painkillerspainkillerspainkillers_ when all his hopes were dashed as he got to the entrance.

Closed.

He could do nothing but stare at the glass doors, swaying a little where he stood. There was probably a twenty-four-hour pharmacy somewhere nearby, but without his phone he’d need to scour the area for one, and he didn’t know how much longer he could drive without passing out. At this rate, he might as well just wait for whoever Snoke sent to finish him off. The pain almost made the thought too tempting.

He stumbled back to his car and stood next to it stupidly, thinking of how much of a mark it was, and for a moment his mind opened a door to the past a little, just enough to let through the thought that maybe he could have picked something up about hotwiring another vehicle from… _that person_.

He just about jumped out of his skin when the door to the truck clunked open. If he’d been a foot shorter, Kylo thought he’d still tower over the small, squat figure that stepped out of it. The man shuffled close, and Kylo almost fell over his feet as he scrambled to get back inside his car.

Before he could manage to do that, the man spoke up.

“All right, are you, sir?”

He was so on the edge that for too many seconds he was certain that this guy, whose head barely reached his midsection, would deal the final blow to him. But upon closer inspection, the man didn’t seem to be all that threatening

Everything about the wrinkled old man was strange—his size and the sparse nest of white hair around his ears and his gait—but that high-pitched rumble that fell past lips that barely moved was what threw him off the most.

“For a drive, a fine evening it is, is it not? Alas, in my truck I overslept, and a late dinner, I had to have first. A cold burger is a burger still, for one in a hurry.”

He could barely follow the strange syntax. And why the hell was this guy telling him all this anyway? The man rubbed the corner of his mouth as he prattled on, and even in what little light there was, Kylo could see a small smile on his face. The entire encounter was almost hypnotic, but he found himself with his hand wrapped stiffly around his keys, the sharp end of one sticking out—just in case—just staring at him.

It appeared that he wasn’t approaching Kylo, after all, and he walked past even as he spoke, straight to the garbage bin next to the long concrete planter that separated the rows of parking spots. He dumped something into it and kept talking without looking at Kylo.

“To Yavin, I’ll get by tomorrow afternoon. Important it is to be there before the storm hits, and so drive all night, I must.”

Yavin. Which was right past…

“Through Chandrila, of course, the trees would be so pretty, and the fastest route would be.” The man’s smile was maddeningly serene.

Of all places, he had to mention _that_.

Maybe he could… maybe…

His mouth got there before his brain could catch up.

“Is it possible—could I… could I ride with you up to Chandrila? I…” He scrambled for an excuse. “I need to get there, too, but… I’m not sure which way would be the easiest, and… and like you said, the storm—” he knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t help it.

“Welcome it would be, some company through the long drive! Certainly, certainly. But to leave this nice car here…”

“I’ll have my friend pick it up in the morning.”

“Ah, then perfect it is.”

 _Chandrila._ This could be his salvation, or this could be him jumping into a fate worse than death. But the old man was now ushering him to the passenger door, and thinking was getting to be more and more difficult.

“Thank you, sir. Let me pay you—”

“With conversation, you will pay me. An old man I am, with many years and many stories, but few ears to listen.” He chuckled, and on any other given day, Kylo would have found the sound grating. “Yoda, you can call me. And you?”

“K—Ben. My name is Ben, Mister Yoda.” He almost slipped, and that _other name_ was the first thing that popped into his mind. He gritted his teeth at having to use it. The man seemed trustworthy enough, but he couldn’t risk introducing himself as Kylo.

“Ben. Hmm. A good, solid name it is for a good, solid young man. But Mister Yoda, my father was, not me.” There was that chuckle again. “Just Yoda, you will call me. Get in, get in.”

He tried not to stare at his companion as they got on the road. How was he even able to see over the steering wheel from how low he was in his seat? But the man must’ve had some kind of magic, as the truck moved as though on a cushion of air.

He realized they had to drive back through the city, but he conceded that this was the far better option than risking driving around some more in his own car. And he was more likely to throw the scent off in case Snoke’s people—his _other_ people—found his car close to the edge of the city but on the other side.

The pain radiating from his torso was almost enough to make him weep, but Yoda’s gentle rambling about cities and countrysides and marshlands—which didn’t seem to require his own participation—and the vibration of the seat under him soon lulled him into succumbing to the bone-deep weariness that finally caught up with him.

Sleep was blessed oblivion.

He was woken up sometime later by someone shaking his shoulder, and then Yoda’s voice bled into his consciousness.

“Ben. Ben. Wake up, young one.”

His ears twitched at that name. He opened his eyes to darkness, and at once his annoyance was drowned out by the pain. He wanted to die. The adrenalin that had allowed him to power through it earlier had now been burned up completely, and he was left in agony.

“All right, are you? Moaning in your sleep, you were.”

The truck was parked at a gas station, and in the gloom he could see Yoda’s eyes on him, the tranquil smile so present earlier now replaced with a thoughtful look.

“Eat this, you must.”

His companion held out a small paper bag to him, and the sight of it reminded him that he never got to eat dinner. But food was the last thing he wanted right now, and the thought of it made his stomach turn.

“I’m okay. I’m not hungry.”

Yoda’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, you are not. Food you must have before you take medication. For your pain.” He nodded his head toward the dashboard, and on it, Kylo saw a small packet. Next to it was a paper cup, out of which a wisp of steam rose.

The man must be an angel.

“Just a few bites, and warm tea.”

Yoda prodded him again with the paper bag, and he took it with no further resistance. Inside it was a warm bun, and even through the nausea his taste buds rejoiced at the simple but familiar fare of steamed bread and meat. The sensation of warmth as he swallowed it down was surprisingly comforting, and before long, he’d finished the entire thing.

Maybe he was hungry after all.

He sipped the tea for some more of that warmth, and with the last few gulps of it he downed three of the six tablets in the packet. As he put the crushed paper cup into the empty bag, he found himself saying words that hadn’t crossed his mouth much in recent memory, and the fact that he meant it with all his being right now made him almost choke on them.

“Thank you. For the food… and the medicine.”

“It is nothing. The facilities, you should probably use. A long drive, we still have. Can you manage?”

He looked out the passenger side window, and the gas station’s bathroom was just a few meters away. He wasn’t actually sure if he could make it, but he certainly didn’t want to ask this small man who probably weighed a third of him for assistance in getting him there and back. And so he simply nodded and slipped out of his seatbelt, and he stepped out before Yoda could say anything about his very obvious gasp of pain.

With deliberate steps and nervous glances to make sure he wasn’t seen, he made it to the empty washroom, which he locked behind him, and he drained his bladder. He took the chance to inspect his injury in front of the sink mirror, and under the stark light, it looked as terrible as he’d expected even before he lifted his ruined shirt. The dark grey material was soaked on one side under his sweater, and through the gash the bullet had made, raw flesh and caked blood glistened with seeping liquid. The sight almost brought his just-eaten meal up, and he had to look at the ceiling for long moments before the feeling passed.

He probably wasn’t going to bleed to death, but it would help to bind it, at least. He deliberated walking to the station store for antiseptic, but at this point the paranoia had settled in comfortably, and he didn’t want anyone remembering him—or worse, to get caught on a security camera.

And so he slipped out of his black sweater, gritted his teeth, and with trembling fingers, warm and wet from the tap, he somehow managed to peel the bloodied shirt off. A few times he came close to popping teeth loose as he tore the cotton into strips.

He’d seen characters in movies do this thing, but he was feeling far from a hero in any kind of story.  There was nothing but uncertainty and terror and the endless pain, and the familiar self-hatred made even more potent by the thought that he should have known that with the way Snoke was, this would have been an eventuality. As for purpose—he could barely stay upright. Planning would have to come later.

He cleaned around the wound with the desperate hope that he’d find antiseptic when he arrived at… wherever he was going. Over a folded bit of cloth, the sleeves tied together made for a decent binding. He put the sweater back on, and was relieved to see that his makeshift bandage didn’t look too lumpy under it.

Best he could do for now.

He stuffed what remained of his shirt into the paper bag with the bun wrapper and the cup, dumped the whole thing into the garbage can, and then washed his face and his hands.

Yoda didn’t say anything as he climbed back into the truck, but he was certain that the man’s assessing eyes were on him the whole time. They pulled out of the gas station, and as he looked out the window, the blurred landscape pulled him into sleep once more.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. Although Yoda was a masterful driver, sitting up for hours with his injury made rest a challenge, and he wove in and out of consciousness. They stopped again a few hours later, and before he could say no to having breakfast at a roadside diner—so sure that the sight they made, with their ridiculous height difference, would ensure identification later—Yoda was rambling on again, this time about how great the food was at this particular place, even if the waitress wasn’t very chatty or hardly looked up from her painted nails.

Kylo didn’t fail to notice the twinkle in Yoda’s eye, but while the sausages and biscuits were merely passable, the old man hadn’t lied about that other thing: the waitress, as well as the other patrons in the establishment, all seemed wonderfully apathetic. In return, his grunted responses to Yoda’s few questions weren’t all lies, either, since he _was_ taking time off work, and he _was_ going to Chandrila because his family was there.

He downed the remaining ibuprofen with the weak coffee. The first dose had dulled the worst of the pain, but he could feel the little comfort it gave beginning to wear off already. When their bill came, Yoda allowed it when he insisted on paying.

They were on the road again shortly, and though he stayed awake—the fitful rest he’d had, the coffee, and the ever-present pain made sure of that—Yoda seemed more interested this time in humming along to the bluesy music that played on the radio than in talking with him. This allowed him to look outside at the passing scenery, though the miles of pretty countryside under the grey sky didn’t do much to quell the dread rising in him.

He was going back to Chandrila.

He’d escaped the place with wounds on his soul and swore never to come back, and in the intervening years, he’d remade himself entirely. But as they came closer to it, it felt like the scars were twitching, undoing the years and trying to change him back into the helpless _child_ he’d been.

Were _they_ even still there? He’d probably have found out if they’d… passed, but he didn’t know much more than that they were likely still alive.

Fifteen years… but the locks in his mind that kept the memories away were coming undone too fast, and it suddenly all felt like _yesterday_.

He didn’t know what waited for him there, but at least no one would be trying to murder him.

Too soon, they were on the road that would pass right by _that_ property, and the realization that the places looked familiar made everything inside him quake. He felt an insane urge to pound his fist against the wound on his side to distract himself from the overwhelming feeling, but he had to resort to digging his fingernails into his palms.

It felt as if they were suddenly moving slower, that the things his eyes landed on each walloped him with memories that stretched time. Or did the truck actually slow down? He wouldn’t put it past Yoda, who through this entire thing had almost seemed preternaturally perceptive. Even if he hadn’t been breathing hard, his companion was probably aware of his turmoil.

And there it was, that small bridge that ran over the stream that cut right into _that_ piece of land, and he was raising his hand, and choking out that here was where he’d be getting off. For an endless moment after the truck pulled over, he stayed frozen in his seat.

“A beautiful place, it is, to call your home.”

He snapped out of his trance and looked at Yoda. This was _not_ his home. But he couldn’t voice that thought.

“All this green, so good for the heart and the soul. And the best thing, do you know? That the storm, it will ravage, and tear all the green away, and yet with time, and a little ray of sunlight, life there will be again.”

Yoda’s chuckle, this time, almost seemed comforting. Those ageless eyes pierced him.

“A strong man, you are, Ben. Stronger than you think. So strong you can break yourself, if care you do not take. Your hurt,” he continued, “do not let it fester. Good things for it, you must take, and time to heal. Allow it, you _must_.”

He found himself nodding, as if that last was an order. And then he couldn’t delay the moment any longer, and his fingers slipped around the door handle.

“Thank you for… for everything.”

He stepped out of the truck, feeling faint from the rawness of his emotions. As it moved away, he heard Yoda’s shrill rumble: “All right, you will be, Ben! Somewhere, some time, I will see you again!”

He watched the truck disappear into the distance.

And then he was alone.

The sky threatened to burst over him at any moment. Somehow, it seemed like an apt backdrop to this new nightmare that was only just beginning. The rustling of the leaves in the chilled wind was a song of portent as he stumbled off the road and into the trees, his feet sure where his heart wasn’t. The gloom was no deterrent, and in his mind’s eye he could already see the grand house.

What if _they_ were there right now? What if they _weren’t?_ What if someone else lived there these days? And in either case, how the hell would he explain himself? Was he really just going to walk up to that house and knock on the front door?

What the fuck was he going to do?

 _Walk_ , was the only thing that his body offered.

He was just so _tired_. He was so tempted to just drop to the ground and let the trees swallow him up. It wasn’t like he’d be missed. By anyone who wasn’t trying to kill him, that was. He’d had an okay life after leaving this place. And now that life, like his first one, was over, too, with ringing catastrophe as its final note once again. Maybe the universe was trying to tell him something. Maybe this was all that was meant for him.

There was no going back, and there was nothing more to look forward to.

His vision was swimming a little. Were these _tears_? He thought they’d dried up long ago, and yet here he was, choking on his hot, fevered breath. Crying like a little boy, crying like every little thing hurt, crying like every little shadow that moved was out to get him.

Yoda lied. These trees offered no healing, and never had. He should have known. He’d been surrounded by these very same ones all those years, and yet here was where he’d hurt the most.

They _all_ lied to him, with their false kindness and false concern and false love. Tried to tell him how to be. Tried to change him. Because he was never good enough for any of them.

Fuck them all.

His spiking anger was familiar respite from the hurt. Maybe he’d live through this, after all. Just to show them. He’d done it once, and he could do it again. He just needed to rest his body a little, and then he could go wherever the hell he wanted.

And then it came to him: _that_ cottage.

It would be easier to face… _him_. He owed _that_ person even less, and if _he_ had any remorse at all over what he’d done, he would have skipped town long ago.

His feverish mind latched on to that hope, and if he was going to get any rest at all, maybe he could do it someplace other than _their_ house, at least. It felt like he’d been walking for ages, and all that exertion made sure that his side was now fully on fire again.

When the small building came into view, the old aversion warred with a staggering sense of relief within him. He took it as a good sign that he got there just as the fat droplets made the trees’ song sound all the more dire. No light shone through the windows, and he made his way across the small clearing between the trees and the cottage’s tiny porch. Breathlessly, he peered through the glass, careful to keep as much of himself out of direct view.

Empty.

He didn’t have a key, but he did have a walletful of plastic cards that were now rendered useless by this whole mess. He pulled a flexible, laminated one out, and hoped that _that bastard_ wouldn’t make his life even more difficult now in this shithole he used to stay in whenever he was in town. He was such a special snowflake that he couldn’t even stay up at the house with his own sister. It took a few tugs on the knob and a lot of swearing, but the door eventually fell open.

He staggered into the small space and locked the door behind him. The light switch told him that there was no power, and he wondered just how long ago it was that _that person_ abandoned this place. In the faint light, he could see that _he_ hadn’t emptied the sparsely furnished room when he left: there were still things on the shelves over the kitchen sink, and there were even curtains on the windows. And the bed—there was a bed, thank the prophets!—had a pillow and sheets on it.

Everything was heavy—his eyelids, his body, his heart. The dull sound of the rain on the roof. He just wanted to sink into that bed and _sleep_.

But his wound demanded his attention. The thought of slow death by fevered infection, all alone in this place, was enough to spur him into action. There must be antiseptic somewhere in the house. He went to the bed and dragged a sheet off of it, and strangely enough, it didn’t smell musty. In the small kitchen, it didn’t take long to find a knife in one of the drawers, and with what little energy he had left, he began tearing the white sheet into long strips.

That was when he heard it: the very distinct sound of a motorcycle, even under the lashing rain.

But the narrow road right outside ended just a little past this abandoned cottage, which could only mean—

Someone had come for him.

He didn’t know just how they found him. But he’d be damned if he’d let Snoke finish him off now.

 

*******

 

And if he’d completely lost his mind then, he wouldn’t be here right now, about to ask _her_ for more of her soft heart.

She’d been strong in his arms as she struggled, but he was so much bigger than her. He could just imagine how he’d terrified her, in the dark, in her own house. With his strength and with that knife, and with the stupid words he’d said. At one point she’d even thought he was going to sexually attack her. And he’d fucking _tied her up_.

The scratches and bites she’d given him were the least he deserved.

But even trussed up like an animal for slaughter, she’d found it in her to feel bad for him and even volunteered to dress up his wound. And then she’d given him her bed. And her food—even tried _feeding_ him with her own hand.

This girl who had so little knew nothing but to give.

So naive. Didn’t she know the world swallowed up people like her?

He found it hard to believe at first that anyone would want to live in a place like this. There wasn’t even a proper table, or chairs. And when he found out that she worked for his… for _that man_ , it was impossible not to feel disdain for her. But he wasn’t surprised that she seemed to like them. Everybody had.

He couldn’t believe he was back here, with yet another person who worshipped _them_. This whole thing was a mistake, and he wanted to howl with the wind at his predicament. But the storm didn’t give him a choice. He was well and truly stuck.

And so he let her spit fire at him with her eyes and her words, in defense of _those_ people and in condemnation of the hurt he’d given her, even as her gentle hands soothed him through the worst of his own pain. Let her call him _Ben_ , because that was how she knew him—which was surprising and humiliating all at once, because she’d known about his past.

She’d seemed very capable as she cared for him, a testament to having had no one else to rely on in her life. She even lit a fire, and it warmed the place right up.

Made her eyes dance.

He wasn’t blind. Not to the way her eyes skittered over him sometimes when she thought he wasn’t looking, or how her breath would quicken whenever she had to come close. He wasn’t vain—it was impossible to be, after the hell that was middle and high school—but he’d been made aware a considerable number of times that he’d grown into his features okay. It was almost amusing how she’d tried hard to hide her attraction to him.

He wasn’t blind, either, to how pretty she was, even though her trappings were as spare as those of this place she lived in. The way her eyes caught the firelight, the way her nose twitched, the set of her jaw, the way her full lower lip would tremble. The way she walked around the room with an efficiency of motion that had its own unique grace. Her hair, when it brushed against her shoulders as she moved around him.

He’d seen, and been with, far more beautiful women, next to whom this girl probably wouldn’t have warranted a second glance. But in this place, he was completely cornered by her being—her warmth, her guilelessness, her generosity. Such foreign things, and he had to fight off this strange captivation, which he knew would be fruitless at best and cruel at worst.

And when she’d burrowed against him that morning in her sleep, all warm and soft and wriggly, he’d slowly woken up and found himself the hardest he’d been in a long time. She’d wrapped an arm and a leg around him, and her thigh…

He’d wanted nothing more than to press her on her back and cover her body with his.

He knew she’d woken up by the way she was suddenly breathing hard, and if she’d given any indication at all, he was so ready to… But to his relief and his agony, she fled to the bathroom before he could act on his urges. And he’d wondered: was she wet? Was she touching herself? Was she as desperate for him as he was for her?

He wasn’t going to humiliate either of them by finishing off alone in her own bed, or even by acknowledging any of it. But throughout the day he found himself wanting to draw a response from her, and it pleased him to fluster her so easily. He’d told himself that this was the extent of his teasing, because he wasn’t going to take advantage of this girl that way, this girl who seemed so much younger than him but whose eyes held a depth of loneliness that was all too familiar, who seemed to not have known much kindness growing up and yet hadn’t let it turn her bitter, this girl who he’d found himself opening up to about things he’d never spoken of, this girl who’d been so good to him. He’d hurt her too much already, and he wasn’t going to devastate her with false hope.

For the first time in too long, he was feeling soft things for another human being, and the depth of it amazed and frightened him.

That didn’t stop his imagination, though, and he’d fought a silent battle of wills with his dick all day.

He almost slipped and kissed her, out on the porch that second night, as she looked straight at his eyes, her hands around his own as he held her cup, her lips glistening with warm cocoa. He just wanted to run his tongue across her lips until she opened up to him, until he could see if she actually tasted as sweet as she’d been—

He resolved, as he sat in front of her fire later, to keep his distance. And leave as soon as the storm let up. It didn’t matter where he’d go.

But she asked him to sleep in the bed with her, and his defenses had instantly crumbled when she cried at his refusal.

And then she begged him to make love to her, and it was impossible to say no, not when he wanted her so much, too. It was the only thing he could give her, and he’d wanted nothing more to make her feel good—but even in the giving, he’d been in awe at how much pleasure he was taking, just from having her fall apart in his arms.

He hadn’t planned to go all the way. He’d never been with a virgin, and he was so afraid of hurting her with his body. But she’d made him see that it wasn’t for him make the decision for her, not when she wanted him.

Not to get to Andrew Snoke and all his power. Not as a rich, successful man himself. Not as a trophy of any kind.

She’d seen him at his worst, and _she still wanted him_.

It was heaven. This untried girl rocked his world so completely and so quickly. Her cries, and the way she tasted, and the way she smelled, the way her body wrapped around him as he sank into her—it all felt like deep cuts to his soul, and once he’d given in, he found himself just needing more of her.

And he hadn’t stopped needing her since then, in so many ways.

His sweet Rey.

 

*******

 

He finally managed to knock on her door, and as he waited for her to come out, he had to remind himself to loosen his death grip on the small bouquet of daisies. It had been one of the last few bunches available at the flower shop downtown, something he remembered to get only at the last minute as he got his ingredients because he was an idiot, and he felt so fucking terrible that he hadn’t had the foresight to reserve Rey something nicer.

The first time he was giving a girl flowers, and he was already messing it up.

When she opened her door, she was already smiling her big, toothy smile, and he felt his heart lurch for the millionth time at the sight. She reached for him as his name spilled from her shiny lips—did she have gloss on?—just as she had so many times this past week, and he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. Maybe he squeezed too tight and too long, because she asked—

“Is everything okay?”

Everything was going to be okay, he was sure. He was already feeling calmer. He just needed this for now, and he didn’t slacken his hold on her.

“Just… I missed you.” Even though they’d been messaging all day, and they were together last night.

Every day this last week, he’d driven her to and from work, and they had dinner together—sometimes right here at her place, sometimes before they went home—but though his parents were openly supportive of this thing with Rey, he’d come home a few times very late at night to the sight of his mom with her eyes a little narrowed and her lips a little pursed.

They were all aware of how awkward it was, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Even though he’d had relationships in the past, none of them had been serious enough or lasted long enough for him to want to live together with any of them. But he wasn’t going to take Rey out of her cottage when it was _her_ space, one she’d needed all her life, and neither of them had been comfortable with the idea of him having her stay up at the big house, not when his parents were there with him.

He’d considered finding his own place elsewhere in town, but really, what was the use if it was just going to be farther away from her than the house? And honestly, him being home was doing wonders for his relationship with his parents.

And on his worst days, he did wonder: what if she suddenly changed her mind about him?

So he had to settle for staying with her until late at night and then walking home under the stars. They were still finding their routine, and this setup was probably temporary. It wasn’t _too_ bad.

“I missed you too, silly.” She pulled back from him and cupped his face in her hands, her eyes probing. She knew his tells now. “Do you want some water?”

Water would be nice, he realized, and so he nodded. When he let go of her, she gasped.

“Are those for _me?_ ”

He’d forgotten about the flowers, and he sheepishly brought them forward.

“Yeah, I—sorry, they’re kind of—”

She took them, and then went up on her toes to plant a kiss on his lips.

“Nobody’s given me flowers before! Let me just—”

She was practically skipping as she went inside, and he followed after her, his gaze finally taking in her maroon sweater, which looked new, and her dark jeans. She’d done her hair up nicely in three buns, which if he was lucky later, he’d have a lot of fun taking down.

She filled an empty plastic pitcher with water and carefully arranged his daisies in it, her cheeks plump from her wide smile, and then she set it down on her coffee table.

“ _Flowers_ , Ben—they’re so pretty! I just can’t—oh, I almost forgot!”

She went over to her TV stand and brought something out from a compartment under it. Something wrapped in colorful paper.

“I… I hope it wasn’t presumptuous of me to get this for you. Wait! Maybe you should open this later, after all. After dinner.” She suddenly held the box close to her chest.

She’d gotten him a present, and he was very curious. He’d agonized for days over what to get her, and he desperately hoped she’d like the simple necklace with the clover-shaped pendant. And the green and orange handmade quilt he’d found online. And the stuffed bunny with droopy ears and bean-stuffed paws and three buttons down its front.

“Okay… and I have yours back at the house. We’ll open them together.”

Her eyes shone with excitement, and he found himself grinning back at her.

“This is already the best Harvest day _ever_ , Ben. Oh, your water!”

As she scrambled to the kitchen, he sunk down into the bed, and that was when he noticed: on it lay _two_ pillows.

Just last night there’d only been the single one.

They barely fit side by side on the narrow bed, those two pillows, but she’d squished them together.

Before his breath could even out, she was in front of him again, and there was a shy look on her face—gods help him, she was so cute. She knew he’d seen the pillows.

“I figured we needed another pillow for when you… you know.”

He took the big mug she held out to him, and that was new too. There was a blue and brown octopus on it, and one of its tentacles served as the handle, the textured appendage reaching up into the lip of the cup. And he remembered how, a few days ago, she’d asked him what his favorite animal was, and he hadn’t known what to say right away because really, he’d never thought about it, and octopuses, amazing animals that they were, was the first thing that came to him.

A pillow on her bed, a mug on her kitchen counter, just for him. Right next to hers. She wanted him right next to her, and he was suddenly feeling choked up.

He grabbed the mug and placed it on the table, and then pulled her down between his knees and held her close once more.

He’d refrained from saying those three words again after the first time, afraid of their power, afraid of overwhelming her—but really, this woman… He was going to _show_ her instead. For as long as she let him.

It was Harvest day, and he had so much to be thankful for.

This was already the best Harvest day _ever_.

 

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well HEY again. So this doesn't add too much, as the chapter title says, as the story is essentially finished already. But it is Ben's POV on certain things, which I'd been wanting to explore a little. For how long it is, it's just a lot of internal things, not much dialogue, and doesn't even show a lot of the things as they happened, lol. Took forever to write because I had trouble deciding how to frame the whole thing. But here it is, and I hope you can still find something to enjoy. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. :)


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